Civil society and the state in left-led Latin America: Challenges and Limitations to Democratization 9781350219205, 9781780322049

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Tables and figures

Tables

1.1 2.1 3.1 6.1

Latin America’s ‘new left’, 1998–2011 . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Bolivarian distribution of power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Strike behaviour in Argentina, 2000–05 . . . . . . . . . . . 42 Council members interviewed and level of involvement in politics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 6.2 Links of council members to political parties . . . . . . . . 90 6.3 Level of participation in the electoral campaign of 2008 . . . . 91 Figures

3.1 Number of government–union agreements in Argentina, 1991–2006 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 6.1 PB participants in Porto Alegre, 1990–2009 . . . . . . . . . 87 10.1 Comparison of Chilean copper production between public and private firms, 1989–2008 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146 10.2 Voting trends in presidential elections in major mining regions, 1989–2005 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152 10.3 Legitimacy of Chilean unions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155

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Abbreviations

ACES

Asamblea Coordinadora de Estudiantes Secundarios (Coordinating Assembly of Secondary Students) ALBA-TCP Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra América – Tratado de Comercio de los Pueblos (Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America – People’s Trade Agreement) ANEP Asociación Nacional de Empresas Privados (National Private Enterprise Association ) AP Alianza País (País Alliance) APG Asamblea del Pueblo Guaraní (Guarani People’s Alliance) ARENA Alianza Republicana Nacionalista (Nationalist Republican Alliance) CAFTA Central American Free Trade Agreement CAP Consejo Asesor Presidencial para la Calidad de la Educación (Presidential Advisory Council for the Quality of Education) CCER Coordinadora Civil (Civil Coordinator) CCSC Consejo Consultivo de la Sociedad Civil (Civil Society Consultative Council) CCSCS Comité Coordinadora de la Confederación de Sindicatos del Cono Sur (Coordinating Committee of Southern Cone Trade Union Confederations) CFP Concentración de Fuerzas Populares (Concentration of People’s Forces) CGT Confederación General de Trabajo (General Labour Confederation) CNPC China National Petroleum Corporation COCHILCO Comisión Chilena del Cobre (Chilean Copper Commission) CODELCO Corporación Nacional del Cobre (National Copper Corporation) COMIBOL Corporación Minera de Bolivia (Bolivian Mining Corporation) COMISEC Comisión Sectorial del Mercosur (Mercosur Sectoral Commission) CONAF Corporación Nacional Forestal (National Forestry Corporation) viii

Confederación de Nacionalidades Indígenas de Ecuador (Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador) CONAMAQ Consejo Nacional de Ayllus y Markas del Qullasuyu (National Council of Ayllus and Markas of the Qullasuyu) CONFECH Confederación de Estudiantes Chilenos (Chilean Students’ Confederation) CONPES Consejo Nacional de Planificación Económica y Social (National Economic and Social Planning Council) CPCs Consejos de Poder Ciudadano (Citizen Power Councils) CRUCH Consejos de Rectores de las Universidades Chilenas (Chilean Council of University Rectors) CSO civil society organization CTA Confederación de Trabajadores Argentina (Argentine Workers’ Confederation) CTC Confederación de los Trabajadores del Cobre (Copper Workers’ Confederation) CUT Central Única de los Trabajadores del Chile (Worker’s United Centre of Chile) DGA Dirección General de Aguas (Water Directorate) DOT Dirección del Trabajo (Labour Directorate) EIA environmental impact assessment EU European Union FDI foreign direct investment FEI Federación Ecuatoriana de Indígenas (Federation of Ecuadorian Indigenous) FMC Federación Minera de Chile (Chilean Miners Federation) FMLN Frente Faribundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional (Faribundo Martí Front for National Liberation) FNRP Frente Nacional de Resistencia Popular (National Popular Resistance Front) FOSDEH Foro Social de Deuda Externa y Desarrollo de Honduras (Social Forum on External Debt and Development of Honduras) FSLN Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (Sandinista Front for National Liberation) FTA free trade agreement FTAA Free Trade Area of the Americas FTC Federación de los Trabajadores del Cobre (Copper Workers’ Federation) FUSADES Fundación Salvadoreña por el Desarrollo Económico y Social (Salvadorean Foundation for Economic and Social Development) GANA Gran Allianza por la Unidad Nacional (Grand National Unity Alliance) ix

Abbreviations

CONAIE

GSL

Governança Solidária Local (Local Solidarity Governance) HIPC heavily indebted poor countries HSA Hemispheric Social Alliance (Alianza Social Continental) ICMM International Council on Mining and Metals IFIs international financial institutions ILO International Labour Organization IMF International Monetary Fund INDAP Instituto de Desarrollo Agropecuario (Institute for Farming Development) INGO international non-governmental organization ISEN Instituto del Servicio Exterior de la Nación (National Foreign Service Institute) ISI import substitution industrialization LAC Latin America and the Caribbean LGBT lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender LOC left-of-centre LOCE Ley Orgánica Constitucional de Enseñanza (Organic Constitutional Law on Education) MAS Movimiento al Socialismo (Movement towards Socialism) Mercosur Mercado Común del Sur (Southern Common Market) MNCs/TNCs multi-/transnational corporations NAFTA North American Free Trade Agreement NED National Endowment for Democracy NGO non-governmental organization OAS Organization of American States OCMAL Observatory of Latin American Mining Conflicts OECD Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development OPEC Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries PB participatory budgeting PBC Participative Budgeting Council (Conselho de Orçamento Participativo) PCMLE Partido Comunista Marxista-Leninista de Ecuador (Marxist-Leninist Communist Party of Ecuador) PDT Partido Democrático Trabalhista (Worker’s Democratic Party) PDVSA Petroleos de Venezuela SA (Venezuelan Oil Ltd) PIT-CNT Plenario Intersindical de Trabajadores – Convención Nacional de Trabajadores (Cross-Union Workers’ Plenary – National Convention of Workers) PMDB Partido do Movimento Democrático Brasileiro (Brazilian Democratic Movement Party) x

private–public partnership Poverty Reduction Strategy Partido dos Trabalhadores (Workers’ Party) Representación Especial para la Integración Regional y la Participación Social (Special Representation for Regional Integration and Social Participation) RN Renovación Nacional (National Renovation) SEM Sistema Educativo de Mercosur (Mercosur Education System) SENPLADES Secretaría Nacional de Planificación y Desarrollo (National Secretariat of Planning and Development) SONAMI Sociedad Nacional de Minería (National Mining Society) UDI Union Democrática Independiente (Independent Democratic Union) UNDRIP United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples YPFB Yacimientos Petroliferos Fiscales Bolivianos (Bolivian National Oil Company)

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Abbreviations

PPP PRS PT REIPS

1 | Globalization, democratization and state– civil society relations in left-led Latin America P eadar K irby and B arry C annon

An insightful point made by Venezuelan sociologist Edgardo Lander about the state–civil society relationship in Venezuela under the presidency of Hugo Chávez offers a useful starting point for considering this relationship in countries governed by the new left in Latin America. Speaking about the impact of chavismo on Venezuelan civil society, Lander commented that ‘the social mobilisation set in train by Chávez’s assumption of power has awakened the majorities from their apathy. They feel themselves owners of the country. Millions of people, previously submissive, want to make their opinions known. And they do so in the consejos comunales, the water committees, the open spaces for debating health and education policies.’ However, Lander added that the Venezuelan political process is ‘marked by a profound schizophrenia’ as ‘the mobilisation was sparked off by the state and depends strongly on the state’. By way of example, he mentioned that the consejos comunales, the ‘touchstone of the new political process’, tend to take seriously all the proposals put forward by the president. ‘But, what happens when amid an intense debate the members of the consejos turn on the TV and see the President announcing that he has made a decision on the question being debated by them? Isn’t it natural that they would feel themselves mere extras?’ (Martins 2010). One of the major characteristics of the new left governments in the region which is widely referred to in the literature is their commitment to deepening democracy (Lievesley and Ludlam 2009; Panizza 2009). For example, Rodríguez-Garavito et al. (2008: 30) write that ‘an emerging front on the agenda of the left is the articulation between local participatory democracy and representative democracy at the national level’. Yet, as Lievesley has pointed out, the victory of left-wing parties, while a reflection of the strength of struggle in the continent, also introduces a tension as the governments that have emerged as a result ‘have sought to give this struggle a “state form” as a way of defusing it’ (Lievesley 2009: 34). The example given by Lander from 3

Venezuela illustrates this tension in a pointed way. ‘It is very difficult for social movements – which aspire to be non-hierarchical – to deal with the power of the state,’ comments Lievesley (ibid.: 34). These opening observations, then, map the context for consideration of the questions being addressed in this book. While the primary concern is to gain a fuller picture of how the relationship between states led by governments of the new left and civil society in these countries is changing, this relationship is placed in the wider context of how these states insert themselves into the global economic order, what today we call globalization. Furthermore, since Latin America is a region with a troubled history of democratization, the way in which the state–civil society relationship develops has major implications for the shape and quality of democracy as it evolves in the region. For this reason, the book situates itself in the literature on Latin American democratization and will, in the concluding chapter, relate the conclusions it draws from the book’s contributors to this larger question. This opening chapter undertakes two tasks. First, it discusses and elaborates its understanding of the relationship between the different variables that frame the book. This begins by situating the book in the literature on Latin American democratization before going on to discuss what it means for both state and civil society. The theoretical discussion then turns to globalization, discussing both its meaning and how it provides an essential context to take into account in understanding the shape of state–civil society relationships. The first section closes with a discussion of the emergence of the Latin American new left. The second task of this introductory chapter is to introduce the contents of the book and its division into three sections; this is done in the second section. Situating this book and its approach

Whither Latin American democratization?  While the emergence of left and left-of-centre governments in Latin America – the so-called ‘new left’ – has been attracting much academic attention (Sader 2011; Philip and Panizza 2011; Weyland et al. 2010; Panizza 2009; Lievesley and Ludlam 2009; Rodríguez-Garavito et al. 2008; Castañeda and Morales 2008; Stolowicz 2008) it is surprising that little of this literature places the phenomenon within democratization theory, particularly transition theory, or ‘transitology’, which held great sway over much political science analysis of Latin America (Diamond et al. 1999; O’Donnell et al. 1986; Linz and Valenzuela 1996; Mainwaring et al. 1992). Here we offer a critical review of transition theory in order to foreground the impor4

State and civil society  Understanding the state in this context requires 5

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tance of a relational analysis of civil society and the state for understanding processes of both democratization and de-democratization. Grugel identifies three types of democratization theories: modernization, historical sociology and transition theory, or ‘transitology’, but it is the last of these which is most pertinent to Latin America (Grugel 2002: 46). ‘Transitology’ sees democratization as a process, led by cost–benefit calculations on the part of key actors, and it has been subject to two major critiques. First, the very concepts of ‘transition’ and ‘democratization’ were held to be inherently teleological in their assumptions (Whitehead 2002: 5), with a pronounced institutionalist and electoralist bias in what was deemed to be the ultimate democratic end-point (Grugel 2002: 61). Secondly, ‘transitologists’ were said to be concentrating too much on elite bargaining and procedural and institutional definitions of democracy, leading to difficulties in explaining the varying outcomes of democratization processes, resulting in conceptual stretching by analysts. Instead, it has been argued that democratization needs to be viewed within a wide-angle, long-term analytical perspective, perhaps from when it was first conceived in Ancient Greece, but certainly since the Enlightenment. Democratization is not seen as a unidirectional process; rather polities can experience periods of democratization and de-democratization – that is, the ‘expansion and contraction of popular rule’. Therefore, all political systems – be they established ‘democracies’ in the ‘West’ or ‘authoritarian’ regimes ­elsewhere – ‘exhibit to greater or lesser degrees democratic and ­auto­cratic traits’ (Nef and Reiter 2009: 3, 4). To echo Barrett et al., ‘it may be more appropriate to speak of democratisation as an ongoing, dynamic process than of democracy as a final end state’ (Barrett et al. 2008: 29). To overcome the focus on elite bargaining and procedural definitions of democracy, Grugel recommends focusing on the interaction between state and civil society within the context of globalization. She argues that, for democratization to occur, the state has to undergo ‘a substantive transformation in its operations and its representativeness’, to give it the capacity to deliver ‘better, more secure lives’ for citizens. Furthermore, a shift in the power balance in civil society must take place to facilitate this transformation of the state. Finally, attention must be paid to globalization’s impact on these processes in each state (Grugel 2002: 65–7). All these three factors will have an impact on the depth and quality of different democratization processes, she states.

a focus on two aspects. The first is the mainstream political science view of the state as a centralized system of rule, with a set of coercive and legal institutions, and a monopoly on force, all operating within a defined territory (Sørensen 2004: 14), though it is not necessary that it be democratic. However, more pertinent for understanding the state in Latin America is a more political economy focus on ‘the national specific form of capital accumulation and its corresponding political regime’ (Soederberg 2005: 170); by the latter is meant the specific institutional features that the state develops to service its regime of capital accumulation, namely how it seeks to create the resources to achieve development. Therefore, the actual institutional features identified in the first element are influenced by the specific regime of capital accumulation that the state adopts. Turning to definitions of civil society we find less agreement. While there is an emphasis on the importance of civil society in the democratization literature (Diamond et al. 1999; Putnam 1993; Grugel 2002), it is not always realized just how contested is the concept. At least four different perspectives can be identified among analysts of civil society. First, liberal perspectives see civil society as separate from state and market, having a watchdog role towards the former and an unproblematized relationship with the latter (Diamond 1999). Secondly, an ‘alternative’ neo-Gramscian perspective, emerging from sectors of civil society, sees it as a realm of struggle riven by inequalities, aimed at transforming the state to benefit the less privileged (Howell and Pearce 2001). Thirdly, some argue that both these neglect what has been called an ‘uncivil society’ of criminal or clandestine groups such as gangs, terrorist organizations, or racist or xenophobic groups, among others (Keane 2004). This is particularly resonant in parts of Latin America, where levels of criminality and violence among nonstate actors are among the highest in the world. Fourthly, and finally, some put forward a perspective denying the validity of civil society as an explanatory concept (Carothers and Barndt 1999) or from a more Marxist perspective questioning its separation from the state (Fraser 1993) or from the state and the market (Wood 2001). Indeed, Meiksins Wood questions the liberal dichotomy of the state as an agent of oppression and civil society that of liberation (Meiksins Wood 1990). For the purposes of this book Nancy Fraser’s (1993) concept of ‘strong publics’ is particularly helpful. Characterized by ‘a strong associ­ ational dynamic and a commitment to inclusive, critical debate’, they are distinguished from a ‘weak public’ of liberal thinking, stressing the separation of civil society and the state and giving the former ‘a mere 6

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opinion forming and watchdog role’ (Howell and Pearce 2001: 7). They move beyond consideration of civil society in the context of democrat­ ization to considering the dynamics of how civil society relates to the market. In this context, they see a strong public as constituting ‘the realm of emancipation, of alternative imaginations of economic and social relations, and of ideological contest’ (ibid.: 8). The concluding chapter of this book will assess to what extent the shaping of civil society under the new left governments of Latin America can be said to be resulting in the emergence of ‘strong publics’. Pearce helps locate the roots of how civil society developed in Latin America in an exploration of the trajectory of democratization since independence. She identifies a bifurcated republican identity in Latin America, between classic liberal republicanism inspired by a belief in individual liberty and a Rousseauian radical republicanism based on belief in the ‘common good’ (Pearce 2004). Struggles between these two types of republicanism shaped the contours of both state and civil society in the region throughout post-colonial Latin American history. From elite-based civil society organizations of the nineteenth century to the top-down inclusion of popular sectors during the populist era; the authoritarian counter-revolution of the 1970s, with its attempted eradication of progressive civil society groups; the renaissance of social movements emerging in reaction to this repression; and the rebirth of ‘civil society’ as a concept in the democratic transitions of the 1980s; in each of these eras it can be argued that distinct groups were favoured over others by national states – and by foreign states through development cooperation or other aid – as the ‘actually existing civil society’. This indicates how the conception and constitution of civil society in any given polity are shaped by the ideology, power configuration, class sectors and political context dominant in that polity. ‘Civil society’ therefore is not a fixed entity, with established permanent features, but rather an ‘empty signifier’ over which struggles take place among the contending social forces for its appropriation and definition. Actually existing ‘civil society’, we contend here, is formed dialectically by the struggles between these different social, political and institutional forces. A further dimension to be highlighted is that the relationship between state and civil society that this account points to is therefore a dialectical one as both mutually help to constitute the other. Pearce’s account draws attention to examples of how the state in Latin America helped constitute different forms of civil society at different periods; however, neither can it be forgotten that civil society struggles also helped shape the state in different ways at different times.

This is particularly important at the present moment in Latin America. As Silva convincingly demonstrates in his detailed examination of the emergence of civil society movements in Latin America challenging neoliberalism, the new left governments of the region are to an extent the result of civil society struggles (Silva 2009). Yet, as the opening insights from Lander indicate, having come to power these new left governments are developing their own forms of relating to civil society; a major purpose of this book is to identify in more detail what these forms are and what the results will be for the quality of the region’s democracies. This analysis therefore concludes that it is necessary not only to take account of who controls the state, or to analyse who constitutes civil society and what impact the existing correlation of forces within civil society has on the state and its actions, but also to focus on how both state and civil society help to mutually constitute one another in an ongoing and dynamic process. Moreover, we argue that these findings must be put within the context of globalization in order accurately to assess some of the constraining features that help shape state–civil society relationships.

Achieving development in a globalized world  The term globalization is used here as a label for intensifying processes of transnational interconnectedness across a range of spheres such as the economic, the social, the political, the cultural and the communicational, though the uneven nature of these processes is acknowledged. Neither does its use imply that globalization itself has agency; rather, it acts as a shorthand for processes of change where agency can be determined only through empirical examination (see Kirby 2006: ch. 4). There is an emerging consensus that globalization is not leading to the demise of the state but rather that the state is changing under the pressures, opportunities and constraints that it presents. As Sørensen summarized it, ‘instead of getting locked into the “state losing” or “state winning” contest, there is a more attractive position: namely, the idea of “state transformation” which is open to changes in both directions’ (Sørensen 2004: 22). Latin America has over recent years offered a particularly interesting test of the much-vaunted claim that globalization is restricting the room for manoeuvre open to states. It is the one region of the world in which governments have come to power that are rhetorically very critical of neoliberalism (and in some cases of globalization) and proclaim themselves committed to moving into a post-neoliberal paradigm or model of development. While debates continue about the extent to which the Latin ­American 8

With Chinese average growth rates around 9 per cent per year even through the 2008–2009 crisis, Latin America boomed as a commodity exporter. Countries such as Brazil saw trade surpluses for the first time in modern history. China quickly became the largest or second largest export market for Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, and Peru, among others. China’s appetite for Latin American primary goods pushed r­egional growth rates and China’s continued role as a consumer of commodities shielded Latin America from the worst effects of the ­crisis. (Kingstone 2011: 110)

However, this favourable situation serves to distract from the region’s failure to transform the productive bases of its economy. Feinberg reminds us that ‘despite undeniable progress, as measured by absolute indicators, Latin America is losing ground in the global competitiveness sweepstakes’ (Feinberg 2008: 155) while the region’s economies remain characterized ‘by low labour productivity, low institutional capabilities and dependency on commodity exports’ (Panizza 2009: 224). For, as Amsden writes, ‘Latin America has been unable to exercise its skills to survive in a high-tech world. Growth has taken the form of spurts and slumps, but on average, as Latin America has followed its northern leader down the path of liberalisation, its growth in income, employment, regional trade, and technology has stagnated’ (Amsden 2007: 147; for evidence, see Urquidi 2005). Furthermore, the role of China is a double-edged sword for Latin America since lowcost Chinese manufactured exports displace similar Latin American goods not only in markets such as the USA but even within the region itself. This, then, highlights one of the great challenges facing the new left governments, how to lay the foundations for an upgrading of the productive economy resulting in well-paid jobs in the modern sector of the economy. With the possible exception of Brazil, there is little evidence to show that the new left is laying the foundations for a high-tech road to development and, as Paus argues, the external circumstances are not particularly favourable for the endeavour (Paus 2009). This situation therefore highlights the importance of the extractive 9

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new left governments are breaking with neoliberalism and moving into a post-neoliberalism (Grugel and Riggirozzi 2012; Weyland et al. 2010), it is widely recognized that some key elements of the global economic situation have favoured the success of these governments. This has largely been due to the emergence of China and its voracious appetite for the region’s natural resources. As Kingstone writes:

sectors of Latin American economies to their continued economic success. And, as recognized by many analysts (see Weyland et al. 2010), the natural resource base of different countries configures differently their strategic room for manoeuvre in the global economic environment. While each country is distinctive (see Orjuela 2007 on the complexity and ambiguity of the Latin American left), two groupings can be identified – Chile, Brazil and Uruguay on the one hand and Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador on the other, with Argentina falling somewhere in between. It is recognized that this division coincides with the muchcriticized division into ‘good left’ and ‘bad left’ made by Castañeda (2006), but such a normative division is not intended here. In examining the cases of Chile, Uruguay and Brazil, what distinguishes them is their lack of the clear comparative advantage that oil and natural gas offer the second group. Therefore the insertion of each into the international marketplace is contingent on maintaining the favour of the markets (investors, buyers) and of generating competitive conditions for the sale of largely primary commodities to overseas markets (this is less overriding for Brazil because of the size of its internal market). However, owing largely to the room for manoeuvre given them by international demand for the oil and natural gas reserves they control, Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador have been able to shape a much more interventionist state. It needs to be remembered that it was partly Chávez’s oil policy when he first took office that helped create this situation. By reversing the previous Caldera’s administration’s steady liberalization of the oil industry (with a view to eventual privat­ization, it was believed) and by strengthening oil prices through an ­active inter­national diplomacy of coordinating production among the Organ­ ization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), Chávez laid the foundations for the large increase in oil revenue that has funded his extensive social programmes. This illustrates the implications of resource endowment and consequent power in the marketplace for state–civil society relations. Finally, the Argentine case stands somewhat apart from this neat typology. Its natural resource endowments are modest compared to the three cases just covered, yet it has shown its willingness to assert the authority of the state over markets in a way that bears more similarity to the second group of countries. As Grugel and Riggirozzi put it: ‘This new role for the state undoubtedly challenges assumptions about a global trend towards policy convergence and the triumph of neo-classical economics based on an extreme interpretation of globalisation and global markets’ (Grugel and Riggirozzi 2007: 100). 10

governments elected in Latin America since 1998 needs to be put into the context of the difficulties being faced by the neoliberal project as growth faltered and the challenge of civil society on the streets grew stronger, overthrowing presidents in Ecuador, Bolivia, Argentina and Peru. It was marked by the weakening of parties that had been dominant in some countries (most notably Peru, Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia) and the growing appeal of candidates from outside the political system, most famously Hugo Chávez, who was first elected president of Venezuela in 1998. At the time fears were being expressed, as Benavente and Jaraquemada put it, of ‘a profound crisis of governability in Latin America for which no viable institutional solutions are apparent’ (Benavente and Jaraquemada 2002: 7). The strength of civil society activism was growing while states were finding it harder to defend a neoliberal project that was not delivering growth or social equity. However, few foresaw in 2002 the wave of new left governments that were to be the result of this new phase in civil society–state interaction. Instead, Chávez was a lone voice, and one who looked very vulnerable as the April 2002 coup against him seemed to confirm. The emergence of the new left opens with the election of Lula as president of Brazil in October 2002. As Panizza puts it, his election ‘invoked the image of a radical turn in the country’s politics, perhaps comparable only to the triumph of Chile’s Unidad Popular in 1970’ (Panizza 2009: 211). It marked, therefore, a major symbolic change in the politics of the region, perhaps best characterized as moving beyond the discredited neoliberal project that had dominated the previous one and a half to two decades, though it was far less clear what was going to replace it. Lula’s election opened a phase in which over ten countries were ruled by presidents and parties of the new left by the end of the decade (though it remains to be seen if the victory of the right in the Chilean elections of late 2009 marks the end of this phase). The wave of new left governments is listed in Table 1.1. What united this disparate group was a discourse very critical of neoliberalism and a pledge to improve the living standards of the poor through active and well-resourced social programmes. But more important than the actual mechanisms used (which were far from radical and which in many cases built on programmes inherited from  previous governments) was the symbolic importance of leaders of the left taking state power. This marked a new relationship between civil society and the state in which both saw one another as allies in a common struggle. In this trajectory, it is accurate to ascribe an 11

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The emergence of the new left  The wave of left-wing and left-of-centre

Country

Venezuela Chile Brazil Argentina Uruguay Bolivia Nicaragua Ecuador Paraguay Guatemala El Salvador Peru

Year

1999 2000 2003 2003 2005 2006 2006 2007 2008 2008 2009 2011

Hugo Chávez Ricardo Lagos Lula da Silva Néstor Kirchner Tabaré Vázquez Evo Morales Daniel Ortega Rafael Correa Fernando Lugo Álvaro Colom Mauricio Funes Ollanta Humala

President

Table 1.1  Latin America’s ‘new left’, 1998–2011

2000, 2006 2006 2007, 2011 2007, 2011 2010 2009 2011 2009

Re-election

Hugo Chávez Michelle Bachelet (to 2010) Dilma Rousseff Cristina Fernández de Kirchner José Mujica Evo Morales Daniel Ortega Rafael Correa

President

How this book addresses these issues

The chapters in this book examine in empirical detail a range of issues in most of the countries ruled by new left governments in Latin America. The book is divided into three sections. The first consists of case studies of Venezuela, Argentina, Central America, Ecuador, Brazil and Chile, examining different aspects of state–civil society relationships and of these countries’ insertion into the global economy. Recognizing the importance of extractive industries for economic growth and development throughout the region, the second section examines how this is impacting on state–civil society relationships in the region as a whole and in a number of countries. The third section turns the focus to ways in which at international levels new forms of participative state–civil society relations have been and are being promoted. The final chapter draws conclusions about the factors promoting and constraining the development of ‘strong publics’ and the extent to which these are deepening democratization. Section One begins with a survey of the rationale behind changing state–civil society relationships in Venezuela, arguably the most radical 13

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important role to civil society activism, which generated a discourse critical of the neoliberal project, built movements to challenge it, and provided many of the leading figures that were to win state power. However, the account here also suggests that this activism on its own was not sufficient but that it interacted with the structural and discursive conditions that gradually saw the weakening of the neoliberal project. This helped create the conditions for the success of the new left. With the left winning state power, however, a new phase opens for civil society–state relations. This has two aspects. Panizza draws attention to the first when he writes of the complex dilemmas faced by the left associated with both the sustainability and the quality of democracy, which requires ‘a balance between conflict and accommodation that creates the political space for the popular sectors to advance their rights, while avoiding the extreme polarisation that has led to democratic breakdowns in the past’ (ibid.: 198). The second, however, is that the new left governments are committed to a project of more radical democratization, making the state more responsive to popular needs and engaging with an active citizenry in doing this (as is illustrated by the example from Venezuela with which this chapter opens). In many countries of Latin America, with relatively weak states and with a mobilized citizenry, this is going to be a tight balancing act to achieve.

of the new left governments in this regard. Muhr outlines the plans of the Chávez government for what it calls a ‘revolutionary democracy’, not only in Venezuela but also at a regional level through the Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra América (ALBA: the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America) and its associated People’s Trade Agreement (TCP), which it has been instrumental in establishing. The chapter limits itself to outlining the nature of and rationale for these forms of ‘revolutionary democracy’ without examining their operation empirically except for offering some data on poverty and inequality that suggests the success of social policies. In Chapter 3, Wylde takes the case of Argentina under Néstor Kirchner (2003–07), outlining the fundamental changes to the state–market relationship that took place as the Kirchner administration developed its new model of capital accumulation. This also involved what the author presents as a new form of social contract between the state and the people, echoing elements of Argentina’s Peronist past but with new features shaped in response to the challenges of contemporary globalization. Cannon and Hume turn to the Central American region in Chapter 4, a region often neglected in the burgeoning literature on the new left in Latin America. They examine the impacts of left-leaning governments in El Salvador, Nicaragua and Honduras on state–civil society relations, place these in the context of the countries’ highly dependent insertion into the global economy, and assess the outcomes for democracy in a region that has only in recent decades seen the emergence of formal democratic structures. In Chapter 5, De la Torre outlines growing tensions between the left-wing government of Correa and some sectors of civil society, placing these in the context of historical forms of corporativism that shaped state–civil society relations in that country in the past. The chapter vividly describes the growing divisions within Ecuadorean civil society resulting from government actions, thus illustrating well the point made in this introductory chapter that state–civil society relations are a constantly shifting terrain on which both mutually constitute one another. Chapter 6, by Leubolt, Romão, Becker and Novy, adopts a more limited focus in critically examining what is perhaps the most emblematic mechanism for developing a more participatory civil society that has been associated with the emergence of the new left, especially in Brazil, namely participatory budgeting (PB). It does this through examining the well-known case of Porto Alegre and a more recent case that has received less attention, that of the city of Osasco. Adopting a ‘strategic-relational approach’ as distinct from the more generally used 14

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Habermasian approach, the authors focus attention on the relationship between political and civil society and illustrate the ways in which new left parties promoted PB to advance their party interests as distinct from the interests of civil society. Finally, Chapter 7 by Jara Reyes closes this section in examining the emergence of a more contestatory civil society in Chile for the first time since the mid-1980s, thus breaking with the state–civil society relationship that emerged from the transition to democracy in which the state dominated and co-opted civil society. The chapter pays particular attention to the participatory mechanisms used by the Bachelet administration to seek to resolve the students’ protests of 2006, protests that have now re-emerged with greater force to challenge the right-wing Piñera administration. Section Two turns its attention to extractive industries and examines how these are influencing state–civil society relations, thereby illustrating how factors associated with globalization may shape these relations. In Chapter 8, Hogenboom outlines the policies of the new left towards hydrocarbons (oil and gas) and mining, and how these are key to providing resources to fund greatly expanded social programmes. The chapter highlights how this benefits large sectors of civil society but that local communities close to extractivist areas often suffer and continue to protest and asks how this is affecting state–society relations. Schilling-Vacaflor and Vollrath in Chapter 9 contrast the cases of Bolivia, ruled by the new left since 2005, and Peru, under a neoliberal government until 2011, showing the different ways each has dealt with this tension between resource extraction and the protection of local communities and the environment. The authors end by examining the prospects for change in Peru with its new left president, Ollanta Humala. The final chapter in this section examines the very different case of mining in Chile. Nem Singh assesses Chilean democratization under the Concertación governments, especially the new left Lagos and Bachelet presidencies (2001–10), both from the point of view of the rights of workers in the copper mining industry and also of how mining was governed, raising questions about the extent of democratization under the new left. The chapters in Section Three examine the interaction of national and international factors. Chapter 11, by Hunt, takes the World Bankled Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRS) as her subject, tracing the fate of attempts to institutionalize new forms of civil society participation within the HIPC initiative for debt reduction in Nicaragua, Hon­duras and Bolivia. She concludes that participation cannot be achieved through externally imposed conditions, nor can top-down responses

to poverty reduction and participation substitute for complex political processes towards sustainable social transformation and democratization of state–society relations. In Chapter 12, Briceño Ruiz shows how the new left changed the nature of regional integration processes in Latin America. Taking the case of Mercosur, he traces the emergence of a social dimension and of possibilities for civil society participation. These chapters provide rich evidence of many different attempts to foster more participatory civil society relations with the state, but also identify some of the limitations of these attempts. Many chapters make explicit reference to the context of globalization and give examples of how this impacts in practice on the ways in which the state and civil society interact. While few draw explicit conclusions as to how these dynamics are impacting on democratization prospects under the new left throughout the region, they provide sufficient evidence to begin drawing tentative conclusions about the key issues raised earlier in this chapter. This is done in Chapter 13.

16

2 | Reconfiguring the state/society complex in Venezuela1 T homas M uhr

Centred around an analysis of the Venezuelan government’s notion of ‘protagonistic revolutionary democracy’, this chapter explores the transformation of the state/society complex in Venezuela and Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) through the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America – People’s Trade Agreement (Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra América – Tratado de Comercio de los Pueblos, ALBA-TCP). I argue that revolutionary democracy is the definitional foundation of the envisioned ‘twenty-first-century socialism’ that, in contrast to ‘really existing socialism’, in which the state/society relations were coordinated by a paternalistic and authoritarian structure of political power (Gill 2008: 26), combines pluralist representative democracy with (Marxist) direct democracy and (C. B. Macpherson’s) participatory democracy. With Venezuela’s oil geopolitics at ­the core, I illustrate the regionalization of direct democracy and participatory democracy (which are the essence of revolutionary democracy) while indicating how the ALBA-TCP, as an explicit alternative to globalized neoliberalism and its institutions and practices, transforms the political and economic geographies in LAC within the context of the global crisis of capitalism. In this process, a counter-hegemonic, pluri-scalar governance regime is being constructed2 that promotes the democratization of LAC politics. ‘Protagonistic revolutionary democracy’ and ‘twenty-first-century socialism’

In its section ‘Protagonistic Revolutionary Democracy’, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela General Strands of the Nation’s Economic and Social Development Plan 2007–2013 postulates that: ‘[t]he public and private spaces are considered complementary and not separate and counterposed as in liberal ideology’ (RBV 2007: 17). This articulated notion of the inextricability of state and society is grounded in the premodern use of ‘civil society’ as synonymous with ‘political society’, and in Karl Marx’s critique of the public/private distinction that will have to 19

be ‘transcended in a form of communal self-government’ (Femia 2001: 137). To Marx, ‘human emancipation’ required the dissolution of the separation of ‘social force’ from ‘political power’ (Marx 1967: 241). Accordingly, the Bolivarian Revolution seeks the construction of the ‘communal state’ through the dialectical interaction between the ‘organized society’ and what I term the ‘state-in-revolution’. This concept is grounded in an understanding of revolution as a mass-based, open-ended ‘fundamental transformation of the state and social structure’ (Stahler-Sholk 2001), and involves a ‘significant restructuring of the social configuration of power’ (Walker 1985: 27). Hence, by state-in-revolution I mean the emancipatory activation of state power – that is, the state-promoted organization of the popular classes and the reconfiguration of state power by progressive forces within the state as well as from outside. This follows the logic of Doreen Massey’s concept of ‘power-geometries’, which is consciously deployed by the Bolivarian government (RBV 2007) to point to the fact that there are unequal geographies of power (that power is exercised relationally in processes of social interaction and that space is constructed through power relations). Accordingly, as power will never be abolished, the aim of progressive politics is to recognize the existence and significance of unequal and therefore undemocratic power-geometries as a precondition for emancipatory political action (Massey 2009). Subsequently, ‘organized society’, as the Bolivarian revolutionary concept antithetical to the liberal-bourgeois concept of ‘civil society’, challenges the historical association of civil society with liberal individualism and a capitalist market society; it is constituted by popular, mass-based organization and the collective exercise of power through councils and movements within, or in the construction of, anti- and non-capitalist social relations and spaces (Muhr 2008a: 29; RBV 2010a, 2010b). Thus, ‘organized society’ reclaims the political and collective character of civil society that had been ‘abolished’ by bourgeois ‘emancipation’ and liberal individualization, from which the separation of the economic and the political is derived (Marx 1967). Paradoxically, however, globalization – manifest in a global governance regime composed of inextricably intertwined public (state) and powerful private actors, such as multi-/trans-national corporations (MNCs/TNCs) and international non-government organizations (INGOs) – has meant the empirical decline of the liberal state/society distinction and its connotation of an independent civil society as a constraint or counterweight to the state, and now is more of analytical and symbolic rather than practical value, for which reason it is more useful to speak of a state/society complex (Cox 1981; Cutler 1997; Gill 2008). 20

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Venezuela’s Bolivarian government considers the reduction of popular participation to the vote as ‘negating the people the possibility of directly acting upon the alienating social relations that impoverish them’ (MINCI 2007a: 19). Therefore, derived from a critical analysis of state-centred, twentieth-century ‘really existing socialism’, direct democracy and new forms of participation are identified as key to any liberating project in order to emancipate labour from the relations of submission (surplus value production; profit maximization; commoditization; division of labour), to overcome political alienation and to reabsorb the political society into civil society through the construction of a new nexus between the state and the people that permits the overcoming of consumerist alienation and the monopoly of knowing (Lanz Rodriguez 2006; RBV 2007: 24; see Harvey 2006: 1–38). The proposed socialism of the twenty-first century is understood in a broad sense as the collective transformation of ‘currently existing society’, and in more specific terms as ‘effecting a stringent critique of the capitalist system’ and of the ‘system of private property’. This should lead towards the ‘collective structuration of production and distribution […] as a material base of a just order in accordance with the needs of the working class’ (Giordani 2009: 21). With the organized community at the core – that is, political organization in councils and other units and bodies (for example, technical water boards, urban land committees, health committees) – Venezuelan law establishes five forms of property that provide some of the structural conditions for the exercise of direct democracy: a) private property; b) public property, owned by state bodies; c) collective property, socially or privately owned, for common use and enjoyment, such as multi-family landownership; d) mixed property, created between the public, collective and private sectors for the use of resources or the execution of activities in the national interest; and e) non-transferable social property, owned by the people as a collectivity, including future generations. This may be in the form of ‘communal direct social property enterprises’ – that is, communal property assigned by the state to communities, communes or cities; or ‘communal indirect social property enterprises’ that for strategic reasons are administered by the state in the name of the community, nevertheless with the option of progressive transfer to instances of ‘Popular Power’ (Muhr 2011a: 100). As Table 2.1 illustrates, Popular Power is one pillar of Venezuelan state power in coexistence with public power. In territorial terms, public power is divided between what is called ‘national power’ (the national government level), ‘state power’ (the federal state government level) and

Legislative power Executive power Judicial power Citizen power Electoral power

National power [Federal] state power Municipal power

Source: Reproduced from Muhr (2011a: 110)

Functional distribution

Territorial distribution

PUBLIC POWER

Table 2.1  Bolivarian distribution of power

Communal self-government in the political, economic, social, cultural, environmental and any other area of societal development:

the Central Region the Centre-West the West the East the Plains the Southern Region Communal councils Communes Communal cities Systems of communal aggregation (e.g. communal federations, communal confederations, etc.)

•  Planning of public policies •  Communal economy •  Social control •  Town and country planning and management •  Communal justice •  Special communal jurisdiction

Functional distribution

Territorial distribution

POPULAR POWER

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‘municipal power’ (the municipal government/mayoralty level). This distribution of power is rooted in the colonial state structure, while functionally it builds on Montesquieu’s three-dimensional distribution of power – that is, the classic liberal democratic division of power into the judicial, legislative and executive branches. This, however, is augmented by two other powers of equal rank derived from Simón Bolívar’s philosophy: the first, ‘electoral power’, is exercised by the National Electoral Council, while the second, ‘citizen power’, by an ombuds­man, looking after citizens’ rights, a comptroller general, concerned with public accountability of state agencies, and a public prosecutor (for details, see Muhr 2008a: 148–51; Muhr 2011a: 111–12). The important point here is that Popular Power is independent of suffrage and elections in the representative democratic sense (constituted power), and instead is governed by direct democratic policy-making – that is, the direct exercise of power by organized society (constituent power). Table 2.1 further shows that the territorial distribution of Popular Power entails the geopolitical restructuring of the inherited liberal, bourgeois-colonial state and its politico-territorial division (capital district; federal states; municipalities) towards the ‘communal state’. Accordingly, the communal state means a system of ‘instances and expressions of Popular Power’ (RBV 2010d) as the revolutionary material­ ization of social power relations, in which the ‘socialist commune’ as the ‘fundamental cell’ is composed of the organized community – communal councils, communes, socio-productive organization (endogenous development nuclei; communal direct social property enterprises; communal indirect social property enterprises; cooperatives; family productive units) and, importantly, social movements. While today the formalization of popular power by far exceeds the norms and standards set by the Bolivarian Constitution in 1999, Popular Power has been legally consolidated by the Organic Law of Popular Power and a set of related organic laws that regulate the functional dimension of Popular Power, including the communal economic system, public and popular planning, and the communes. Through these laws, equality of legal status of both forms of power is established. In fact, public power (the formal state apparatus such as ministries) has to be the facilitator of Popular Power (political, socio-productive and other instances and expressions) (RBV 2010c: Articles 23–30). However, as public power is associated with state power, and Popular Power with organized society power (see ibid.: Article 26), the Organic Law of Popular Power has in philosophical terms not overcome the ontological state/society dichotomy. Moreover, since the instances of

Popular Power have to register with a state institution (the respective ministry) in order to participate in the new structures (RBV 2010b), the power of recognition rests with the state rather than within society (Massey 2009), which reinforces the dichotomy. Nevertheless, with the repoliticization of society, the boundary between the two has become blurred as public power and Popular Power are the two pillars of the emergent state power structure. While the structural contradiction between constituted and constituent power inevitably creates a relationship that is conflictual and cooperative at the same time (Azzellini 2010), I have proposed to understand this relationship as a dialectical one in the process of transition (Muhr 2008a: 266; 2011a: 85, 168–210). As indicated at the beginning of the chapter, I theorize protagonistic revolutionary democracy as the definitional foundation of twenty-firstcentury socialism, in which representative democracy, direct democracy and participatory democracy coexist. Most commonly, however, the concepts of direct and participatory are conflated, used inconsistently and/or interchangeably, as in ‘direct and participatory democracy’, by public commentators, scholars and political actors alike, including the Venezuelan government (e.g. Avritzer and Santos 2003; Dieterich 2005; Ellner 2010b; Hilmer 2010: 47; RBV 2007: 17–18). Therefore, in the following, I draw on theories of direct democracy and participatory demo­ cracy to show that direct and participatory are distinct sub-concepts of revolutionary democracy. I outline operational mechanisms of both models of democracy in Venezuela, before turning to their regionalization through the ALBA-TCP. Direct democracy consists of the ‘twin themes’ of worker and community control (Benello and Roussopoulos 1972: 4) – that is, social control of the means of production and local political organization in councils. Derived from the experience of the Paris Commune, direct democracy would replace the liberal state by a pyramidal commune structure, with directly elected committees at the base (company, community) and delegates at the upper levels (districts, towns, national) (Marx 1942 [1871]: 498–501). As previously sketched out, this is essentially the idea and materialization of the communal state. Accordingly, the Bolivarian government’s national development plan 2007–2013 associates direct democracy with a sovereign people who can ‘by themselves run the state’; they may delegate their power, but not their sovereignty (RBV 2007: 17, 19). Four major mechanisms of direct democracy have been created in Venezuela: first, the ‘recall referendum’, through which any publicly elected office-holder can be revoked once half their term in office has elapsed; secondly, ‘social street parliamentarism’, which 24

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is a form of popular co-legislating that follows the antique philosophy of citizens’ direct participation in judicial and legislative functions, as well as Rousseau’s ‘self-government’ – that is, the people themselves make the laws that rule them (Held 2006: 45–6); thirdly, the ‘communal councils’, which are autonomous instances of Popular Power that can connect with state organs or neighbouring communities (RBV 2009), and of which approximately 31,000 existed in 2011; and, fourthly, the ‘communal direct social property enterprises’, which are related to the communal councils, although they do not have to be located within the territorial space of the council that establishes and manages them (Muhr 2011a: 116–22). However, exercising direct (as well as representative) democracy is contingent upon political, economic, social and cultural conditions which are the essence of participatory democracy promotion. Here, I follow C. B. Macpherson to understand participatory democracy as people’s social, political, economic and cultural participation and protagonism derived from ‘the equal right to self-development’. Macpherson draws on the distinction between ‘protective democracy’ and ‘developmental democracy’ as the chief variants of liberal demo­ cracy. The two strands bear conflicting conceptions of the human being: in protective democracy, society is construed as a ‘collection of competing, conflicting, self-interested consumers and appropriators’; in developmental democracy, it should be ‘a community’ in which participation aims for ‘the achievement of a higher, more socially conscious set of human beings’ (Macpherson 1977: 51, 79; also Held 2006: 70–95). Macpherson also analytically separates the politico-economic (direct democracy) from the socio-psychological and identifies two interdependent conditions for participatory democracy: first, a ‘change in people’s consciousness (or unconsciousness)’, from an individualist consumer identity to one whereby there are exerters and developers of their own capacities, which, owing to its collective spirit, is expected to foster a sense of community; and, secondly, a substantial reduction in social and economic inequality (Macpherson 1977: 99–100). It is precisely this message which is expressed through the Bolivarian government’s postulate that the ‘full development of the citizen’ in relation to the exercise of democracy requires raising the ‘collective well-being’ through income and wealth redistribution (RBV 2001: 8) and material and spiritual basic needs satisfaction (RBV 2007: 24). These premises are also at the core of the twelve cardinal principles of the ALBA-TCP Joint Declaration, signed between Cuba and Venezuela at the founding act of ALBA in 2004, stating that the initiative ‘is conceived

of as an all-embracing process which will assure the elimination of social inequalities and promote quality of life and the people’s effective participation in forging their own destiny’ (ALBA 2004). The institutionality of participatory democracy in Venezuela comprises an integral set of over thirty universally accessible misiones (missions) in the social, political, economic and cultural spheres. As a social wage, they are the principal mechanism for the distribution of the social product irrespective of individual contribution. Fundamental has been Misión Identidad (Identity), which provided over five million hitherto disenfranchised people with legal citizenship (ID cards) by 2007; subsidized food is distributed through Misión Mercal; comprehensive free healthcare, including dental treatment, through missions Barrio Adentro (Inside the Barrio), Milagro (Miracle) and Sonrisa (Smile); the most excluded (such as people living on the street, victims of HIV/ AIDS) receive support from Misión Negra Hipólita’s mobile care centres; women’s rights are translated as Misión Madres del Barrio (Mothers of the Neighbourhood), and deprived children receive free music education through Misión Música; environmental policies are realized through missions Arbol (Tree) (reforestation) and Revolución Energética (Energy Revolution) (energy saving and alternative technologies); and education at all levels and in all forms through missions Robinson I, II, III, Ribas, Che Guevara and Sucre (Muhr 2011a: 123–7). The missions seek to promote the necessary ‘reciprocal incremental change’ in consciousness, social equality and democratic participation (see Macpherson 1977: 100–1). In contrast to conventional assistentialist or compensatory welfare schemes (social democracy), they combine short-term poverty alleviation with long-term structural transformation. As expressions of the new institutionality of the state-in-revolution, the missions underlie the redefinition of the state/society relationship towards one characterized by ‘co-responsibility’ (D’Elia 2006: 194), which means that both the state and the people share the responsibility of fulfilling the Constitution and the laws, with or without direct involvement of the traditional state apparatuses. Defined as ‘the conjunction of constituted power and constituent power’ (MINCI 2007b: 7, 12), the missions are a process in which the hitherto excluded and dispossessed reverse their condition through protagonistic participation (D’Elia 2006: 212, 217), to transform the politico-economic (direct democracy), the institutional (changes in the perception of the state and the role of its institutions), and the cultural (changes of values, identities and behaviour), with the objective of social equality and an emancipatory individual (positive self-image) and collective identity (Muhr 2011a: 125). 26

The ALBA-TCP: transforming the political economy of LAC

The ALBA-TCP was founded by Cuba and Venezuela in 2004, and has since been joined by Antigua and Barbuda, Bolivia, Dominica, Ecuador, Nicaragua and St Vincent and the Grenadines. A number of countries, including Haiti, Paraguay, Grenada and the Dominican Republic, are observers. The bloc’s composition shows that to date the initiative has attracted less developed economies that seek structural transformation towards a production-based, value-adding economy in strategic sectors. As a geopolitical project ‘between states that share the same vision of the exercise of national and regional sovereignty’ (ALBA 2008), the ALBA-TCP is governed by the principles of solidarity, cooperation, complementarity, reciprocity and sustainability – principles that are distinctly different from market exchange (see Muhr 2010 for details). Thus recognizing international asymmetries, the orthodox comparative (locational) advantage is replaced by the ‘cooperative advantage’ in the revitalization of the idea of a New International Economic Order. In contrast to neoliberal globalization and its maximization 27

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While manifestations of the empowerment associated with the missions are best experienced in situ – that is, in the popular community – the changing conditions for participation, mobilization and protagonism in Macpherson’s sense – the reduction of inequality for the full development of people’s capabilities (1977: 114) – are captured in the following exemplary data: between 2002 and 2008, poverty was reduced from 48.6 to 27.6 per cent, and indigence from 22.2 to 9.9 percent (CEPAL 2010b: 13); the historical income inequality, as represented by the Gini coefficient, diminished from 0.498 in 1999 to 0.412 in 2008, which is one of the lowest values in LAC today (CEPAL 2010c: 70);3 and higher education gross enrolment rose from 28 per cent in 1999 to 79 per cent in 2008, which places Venezuela second in LAC after Cuba, and eighth worldwide (UNESCO Institute for Statistics 2010). The final section illustrates the regionalization of revolutionary democracy through the ALBA-TCP. It seeks to show that the mutual constitution of state and society is an ongoing and dynamic process that transcends the national, while reconfiguring the power structures at the regional and perhaps global scales. With Venezuela’s oil geopolitics at the centre, attention is drawn to the ways in which LAC’s political and economic geographies are transformed, which involves the construction of a trans-national organized society. However, as these processes unfold within a historical structure, the section will also draw attention to constraints within the context of globalization.

of ­competitiveness between territorially delimited spaces of capitalist production (for example, ‘world cities’), revolutionary democracy ­pursues the reconfiguration of economic and political power across the social space of the state/society complex to balance out the historical geographies of uneven development – a new power geometry (Massey 2009). At this moment, the power of global (monopoly and oligopolistic) capital, rather than private property per se, is targeted within a mixed economy rationale in the construction of an ‘Economic Zone of Shared Development’. This emergent ALBA-TCP regional space is produced through regionalist as well as bi- and multi-state and trans-national cooperation and integration mechanisms between state and non-state actors and forces, through which the ALBA-TCP reaches beyond the de jure region (the eight-member bloc) into the de facto region (the entire LAC) and beyond (the global) (for details, see, for example, Muhr 2008a, 2008b, 2011a). In this way, the ALBA-TCP establishes a counter-hegemonic, pluriscalar governance regime in which institutions of representative demo­ cracy coexist with the institutionalization of direct democracy: the state, headed by the Council of Presidents, and subordinate minis­terial councils (Political; Social; Economic), commissions and working groups; and the Council of Social Movements that integrates LAC’s organized societies. The Council of Social Movements is in direct dialogue with the Council of Presidents and may be viewed as a mediator between local actors and the formal states-led bloc; its strategic relevance consists in the creation of national chapters in the ALBA-TCP member states to integrate the organized societies from the ALBA-TCP member countries and from outside the ALBA-TCP territories, to ‘globalise the struggle’ (ALBA-TCP 2009). It is important at this point to note that the concept of the state-in-revolution can be applied to other ALBA-TCP member states, especially Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua. There, the power structures are reconfigured in similar ways as in Venezuela, although these (under-researched) processes and policies are not necessarily uniform. Therefore, varying terminology and strategies are used with respect to the construction of direct democracy in the respective national terri­ tories: the Bolivian Constitution of 2009 refers to the ‘organized civil society’ and ‘popular sovereignty’ exercised in direct and delegated form (República de Bolivia 2009: Articles 7, 241); Ecuador’s Constitution of 2008 refers to ‘citizen power’ and ‘social control’ through ‘all forms of societal organization as expressions of popular sovereignty’ (República de Ecuador 2008: Articles 95, 96); and Nicaragua’s Constitution, written in 1987 under the Sandinista revolution, establishes that political 28

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power is exercised by the people through both ‘their representatives’ and ‘directly’ (Article 2), the latter of which is implemented as ‘councils’ and ‘cabinets’ of ‘citizen power’ (República de Nicaragua 2007). In summary, the instances of popular power in ALBA-TCP territories and beyond become organized in the Council of Social Movements, which, as a politics of scale, serves the upscaling of power from the local to the regional and the global. Elsewhere (Muhr 2011b), I map out ten ALBA-TCP development cooperation and integration dimensions and their institutionalization: the cultural; education and knowledge; energy; the environmental; the financial; industry and trade; the legal; the military; the politicoideological; and the social-humanitarian. Since 2007, by drawing on Simón Bolívar’s vision of the Grand Homeland (Patria Grande), biand multi-state ‘grand-national enterprises’ (empresas grannacionales – GNEs) (regional production and distribution chains and networks), ‘grand-national projects’ (proyectos grannacionales – GNPs) (action programmes) and ‘grand-national institutes’ (institutos grannacionales – GNIs) (research centres) have been created in the stated development dimensions. GNEs, GNPs and GNIs, which may also integrate private companies and organizations, are counter-hegemonic responses to capitalist MNCs/TNCs. As an integral development paradigm, the different ALBA-TCP dimensions and institutions complement each other, which is perhaps most clearly manifest in the interrelatedness of the social-humanitarian and energy security dimensions within the Petroamérica energy integration strategy (oil, gas, renewable energies), composed of the three subregional blocs Petrosur, Petroandina and Petrocaribe (Muhr 2008a). As a politics of oil, Petroamérica entails the redistribution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela’s material capabilities (petroleum resources) by employing a range of mechan­ isms – in particular: a long-term, low-interest financing scheme; the possibility of payment in kind and services; and the elimination of intermediaries along the value chain as participation is restricted to state companies that are created in countries where no adequate state infrastructure exists. Proportional to the world market price, up to 70 per cent of a member state’s oil bill is diverted to bilateral and regional structural convergence funds. With respect to the eighteen-member Petrocaribe, for example, founded in 2005, out of $6,900 million worth of oil supplied by June 2009, $1,400 million were tangible savings to the partners and $2,900 million deferred payments destined for the associated development funds (Ramírez 2009). Participatory democracy is promoted throughout LAC via a number

of mechanisms. First, the Venezuelan missions have been regionalized: most prominently, the Cuban Yo Sí Puedo literacy method has been inter- and trans-nationalized within LAC as Misión Robinson Inter­ national, to the benefit of 3.8 million hitherto illiterate people in over twenty LAC countries by 2009. Also, Cuba and Venezuela have, through Misión Milagro, provided free-of-charge ophthalmological treatment to 1.9 million dispossessed people in thirty-three LAC countries between 2005 and early 2011. Secondly, the aforementioned bilateral and regional structural convergence and development funds directly serve the reconfiguration of the state/society complex. For instance, by 2010, the ALBATCP Caribe Fund had allocated $179 million to eighty-five social and socio-productive development projects in twelve Central American and Caribbean states, from which about 15.4 million dispossessed ­people had benefited by 2008; in Nicaragua, the cooperative National Rural Bank (Caja Rural Nacional, Caruna) gives low-interest micro-credits to small producers and cooperatives, from which about fifty thousand persons in fifty-seven productive rural cooperatives benefited within the first year (Muhr 2010). Thirdly, the grand-national projects (GNPs) and grand-national enterprises (GNEs), such as the GNEs ALBA-Foods, Soya, ALBAMed, ALBAFarma and the GNPs ALBA-Health, ALBA Cultural, ALBA-Education, and the GNP Literacy and Post-Literacy, operate in the most relevant human security areas. Through the latter, three ALBA-TCP members – Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua – were declared illiteracy free in accordance with the international standard in 2008/09, while post-literacy and basic education are becoming universalized in the emergent ALBA-TCP education space. As Peadar Kirby and Barry Cannon state in the introductory chapter, the ‘room for manoeuvre’ that has facilitated the ‘interventionist state’ was created through the Chávez-driven strategic strengthening of OPEC (and a steadily rising petroleum price in the world market over the past decade). In contrast to most socialist revolutions, which occurred in peasant society contexts with heavy dependence on ­­raising agricultural productivity to finance (industrial) development (Cox 1996: 218), Venezuela constitutes an important case for the study of resource endowment mobilized for structural transformation beyond the national. Continued participation in the world market should not be understood as a contradiction, but as an expression of the constraints imposed by the framework for action (Cox 1981), through which countries like Venezuela are tightly integrated into the global corporate world. Put differently, while the prevailing historical structure is reproduced, simultaneously it is also resisted as an 30

Conclusion

The case of Nicaragua exemplifies the interrelatedness of the transforming trade, aid and investment geographies in LAC and the construction of revolutionary democracy through the ALBA-TCP. This bears the following implications for democratization processes in a globalized world: first, the Council of Social Movements provides the structure for the exercise of direct democracy through a pluri-scalar governance 31

2 ·  Muhr

a­ lternative configuration of forces – a rival structure – emerges through a pluri-scalar war of position (Muhr 2008a, 2008b, 2011a). This is, for instance, manifest in the incipient reconfiguration of the geographies of trade and development cooperation in LAC: as intra-ALBA-TCP (the eight-member bloc) trade exports grew from $5 billion in the period 2000–04 (pre-ALBA) to $9 billion in 2005–09, Venezuelan imports from the ALBA-TCP countries rose by 90.7 per cent between 2006 and 2009. Interestingly, the principal ALBA-TCP merchandises are agricultural primary and low-technology products (food, beverages) as well as services, while fuels and lubricants appear to be less dominant than often assumed (food, agriculture and livestock experienced the highest growth rate between 2005 and 2009) (Aponte-García 2011). However, despite the current structural limitations with respect to the types of merchandise, and although Venezuela’s imports from ALBA-TCP members represented only 4.9 per cent of the country’s total imports in the first semester of 20104 (ibid.), the adumbrated trend is likely to intensify in the context of the global financial and economic crisis, as the GNEs are becoming consolidated and a regional industry created. The case of Nicaragua exemplifies this point: while Nicaraguan exports to Venezuela increased from $2.1 million (2006) to $119.2 million (2009), Nicaragua’s imports from that country grew from $220.9 million to $586.6 million over that period; between 2008 and 2009, Nicaraguan exports to all world areas declined by between 6.6 and 37.5 per cent, while exports to Venezuela increased by almost 300 per cent.5 Although the trade volume is relatively small in absolute terms ($249 million as compared with $566 million to the USA in 2010) (BCN 2011a), this reorientation has to be evaluated in relation to the Venezuela/ALBATCP official development cooperation, which in 2010 amounted to $500 million (41.9 per cent of the total financial inflows to Nicaragua) (BCN 2011b). This cooperation has effected the reinstitution of free healthcare and basic education, as well as subsidized food, housing, productive credit schemes for women, and rehabilitation programmes for street children (Muhr 2011a: 200).

regime; secondly, participatory democracy promotion means the reduction of inequality for human development and protagonism; thirdly, the democratization of the organization of production with a socialist orientation (social, state and private ownership) through regional production and trade chains generates new social forces that, in turn, drive the restructuring of the state/society complex; when generalized, the changes in the structure of states impact on world order (Cox 1981: 100). Unlike the hegemonic globalization and regionalization processes driven by the capitalist state and capitalist private actors, and although the Bolivarian revolution has not fully overcome the ‘dual power’ situation – the ‘mere parallelism’ or ‘juxtaposition’ of formal representative and popular power (Poulantzas 2000 [1978]: 264) – I have proposed that in the process of transition the state-in-revolution and the organized society are becoming dialectically interrelated as one internalizes the other in the construction of the new (socialism). This of course is not free from conflict: both state and society actors may be co-opted or repressed by ruling individuals and parties, counter-revolutionary forces and constraints (individual power, selfish interests, corruption, consumerism, and so forth). These are, however, not the principal concerns here. Returning to two key issues raised in the introductory chapter to the book, I would argue that, with respect to Panizza’s concern of ‘extreme polarization’ potentially leading to ‘democratic breakdowns’, this principally is a matter of the anti-revolutionary sectors sticking to the democratic rules. The series of USA-instigated and/or supported elite-­entrepreneurial coups d’état – Venezuela (2002); Haiti (2004); Honduras (2009); Ecuador (2010) – suggests otherwise. LAC societies have for centuries been polarized along social and cultural lines – a polarization that has been (re)politicized over the past decade of de-neoliberalization. After all, polarization is the consequence, if not essence, of a class society. In this respect, Lander’s notion of a ‘profound schizophrenia’ between ‘mobilisation [that] was sparked off by the state’ but ‘depends strongly on the state’ lacks explanatory power. Can this kind of proactive, emanci­patory state action – the state-in-revolution that mobilizes for its own transformation – really be put into the ‘state=bad/society=good’ equation upon which Lander implicitly draws? Perhaps, as proposed in this chapter, the state/society relationship can more usefully be understood as a dialectical one: a relationship in which one constitutes and transforms the other in the effort of dissolving the separation of social force from political power in the construction of a socialist state/society complex. 32

1  This chapter is grounded in an interdisciplinary doctoral and post-doctoral research programme funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC, PTA-030-2003-00417; PTA-026-27-1902). Employing Michael Burawoys’s reflexive science model and extended case method, sixteen months of ethnographic fieldwork were conducted in Venezuela, Nicaragua and El Salvador between 2005 and 2010. Data are drawn from participant observation as well as contents and critical discourse analysis of: national development plans; over four hundred ALBA-TCP-related documents (2000–11) (declarations, memoranda, agreements, treaties, conventions, statutes, policy texts, legislation); and sixty-seven semistructured open-ended interviews (officials, coordinators, legal advisers, academics, civil and organized society actors). This kind of work seeks theory extension, in this case counter-hegemonic globalization theory. See Muhr (2008a, 2011a) for theoretical and methodological details. Translations from originals in Castilian are by the author. 2  The notion of (spatial) scale is used to exemplify how political and economic actors organize, construct and mobilize their activities and political projects around a political geographic scale of governance, such as the local, national, regional, global (Gregory et al. 2009: 665).

Hegemony in the Gramscian sense means that the supremacy of a social group manifests itself in economic, intellectual, political and moral leadership, to which the subalterns give their active consent, while coercion is used only exceptionally as a disciplinary measure (Gramsci 1971: 12, 57–8). I follow Cox’s argumentation that hegemony is constructed and reconstructed through the dialectical interaction of forces – material capabilities, ideas and institutions – that are both products and facilitator of a particular world order. Counterhegemony involves a transformation in norms, ‘new under­standings and practices ­capable of replacing the dominant ones and thus of offering a new common sense’ (Santos and Rodríguez-Garavito 2005: 18). 3  The 2009 values for Brazil, Chile (frequently referenced as a success model of neoliberalization) and Colombia are 0.576, 0.564, 0.578, respectively (CEPAL 2010c: 70). 4  As compared to imports from the USA (28 per cent), China (11 per cent), Brazil (10 per cent), Colombia (6 per cent) and Mexico (4.7 per cent) (Aponte García 2011). 5  Exports to the USA declined by 6.6 per cent; to Central American trade partners by 9.9 per cent; to ­Europe by 16.7 per cent; to Asia by 37.5 per cent; to the ‘rest of the world’ by 21.1 per cent; exports to Venezuela increased by 296.7 per cent (BCN 2010: 102).

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Notes

3 | State–civil society relations in post-crisis Argentina C hristopher W ylde

The crisis of 2001 resulted in extreme economic and social dislocation in Argentina, culminating in a default on the national debt and the collapse of the hard peg (or convertibilidad), with a subsequent devaluation of the peso. Economic impacts of this crisis were catastrophic, with severe contraction of the economy and output, as were the social consequences in terms of poverty and immiseration. In addition, the magnitude of the economic crisis and its social consequences forced many Argentines to re-evaluate domestic politics in the search for the causes of such a crisis. In the post-crisis administration of Néstor Kirchner (2003–07) this search for the causes of the crisis manifested itself in the search for a new model of capital accumulation. The model that emerged involved fundamental changes to the state–market relationship (see Wylde 2010), which were a function of a new form of social contract between the state and the people. This social contract was shaped not only by the politics of the 2001/02 crisis but also by the forces of contemporary globalization. This chapter will therefore seek to map the changing relationship between society and the state in Argentina during the administration of Kirchner, as well as how that relationship intersects with globalizing capital. The framework of this book is based on an understanding that the construction and constitution of civil society are ‘shaped by the ideo­ logy, power configuration, class sectors and political context dominant in that polity’ (Cannon and Hume 2012). In addition, it is necessary to understand the importance of globalization’s impact on these factors. The historical context is therefore fundamental to understanding the process of (re)constitution of the institutional structures that form the basis of civil society and its relationship with the state. More­ over, as Kirby and Cannon state in the introductory chapter, the state and civil society mutually constitute each other. In the context of the Latin American ‘pink tide’, this manifested itself in the rise of left and left-of-centre regimes across Latin America that absorbed many 34

Historical forms of capital accumulation in Argentina

Peronismo  The rise of Peronism had extremely important implications for Argentina. Economic policies of import substitution industrialization (ISI) during his presidency initially produced an impressive growth record, and combined with his generous legislation in favour of worker rights, generated huge popularity. At the same time, these policies served to undermine the influence of rival, radical competitors in the working class. For example, he greatly expanded the number of unionized workers, and helped develop the Confederación General de Trabajo (CGT), created in 1930, into a powerful and influential institution. These labour policies generated sympathy for him among both organized and unorganized labour, and members of the union leadership came to see their future organizational prospects as bound to Perón’s political survival (Di Tella 1983: 9). Therefore, for James, ‘… a crucial legacy of the Perón era for labour was the integration of the working class into a national political community and a corresponding recognition of its civic and political status within that community’ (James 1988: 12). 35

3 ·  Wylde

of the critiques of the neoliberal project that had originated in different elements of civil society during the 1990s and at the turn of the century. Therefore, in the context of Argentina, the collapse of the legitimacy of neoliberalism crystallized as a direct result of the multifaceted crisis of 2001/02. This was articulated by a vibrant plethora of civil society actors ranging from piqueteros to asambleas barriales that together constituted the rise of a strong public. The central thesis of this chapter is that the post-crisis regime of Néstor Kirchner was able to reconstitute the state to engage with many of these critiques and absorb them into the state’s relationship with society more broadly – in line with Kirby and Cannon’s assertion of mutual (re)constitution of the two spheres. Thus, while 2003 marked the start of the decline of civil society movements in Argentina, many of their ideas became central tenets of the state owing to their absorption into the renegotiation of the Argentine social contract by the first Kirchner administration. This has had a clear impact on the democratization process. As stated in the introductory chapter, the process of democratization can best be seen through the interactions of state and civil society in a ‘transitological’ process (Grugel 2002). In the context of post-crisis Argentina this has manifested itself in the absorption of some central tenets of radical social movements into the workings of the state; or, in other (neo-Gramscian) words, the absorption of counter-hegemonic ideas into the Peronist state.

Peronism’s fundamental political appeal therefore lay in its ability to redefine the notion of citizenship within a broader, and ultimately social, context (ibid.: 15). Perón’s discourse denied the validity of liberalism’s separation of the state and politics from civil society, owing to its roots in historical individualism and positivism. Citizenship was not defined in terms of individual rights and relations within political society, but was redefined in terms of the economic and social realms of civil society (ibid.: 17). Or, in other words, civil society and political society were reducible to the Peronist will of totality (Acha 2004). This means that social goals and the general increase of society’s well-being as a whole were stressed, as the individual pursuit of wealth was often detrimental to these social goals owing to the potential for massive inequalities of both wealth and power. Citizenship, therefore, was more about social equity, rather than the individual pursuit of wealth. Society was more integrated with the state, based on linkages with the urban working classes through institutions such as the trade unions, and elements of the national bourgeoisie as a result of the benefits gained from the government’s ISI policies. For the first time urban workers’ interests were represented by the state, giving them a stake in its survival. This has had important consequences for subsequent state–society relations in Argentine history, as well as contemporary relations. First, the Peronist party is still the dominant party in Argentine politics. Indeed, Kirchner’s Frente para la Victoria is a modern splinter of the Partido Justicialista (PJ). Further than this, the understanding that the state should represent the views of the workers, and the institutionalized conduits that facilitate this, remained. Therefore, the Peronist conception of giving the urban working classes a stake in the state also remained, and permeates Argentine politics to this day.

Menemismo  The return to democracy in 1983 was not the solution to the economic troubles of Argentina present during the dictatorship period. Hyperinflation under Alfonsín facilitated the rise of Carlos Menem, and a radical neoliberal reform agenda that served to fundamentally alter Argentina’s economy, the state’s involvement in that economy, its place in the global economy, and therefore its subsequent state–society relationship. Despite being elected on a Peronist platform, as soon as he was in power in 1989 Menem initiated a programme of ‘neoliberalism by surprise’ (Stokes 2001). He constructed and maintained a powerful coalition between the economic right and the working class, forged through an emphasis on a discourse around the idea 36

37

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of economic emergency. The context of hyperinflation and chronic instability that prevailed allowed Menem to persuade these groups that desperate times called for desperate measures (Tedesco 2002: 474–5; Grugel and Riggirozzi 2007: 90; Chudnovsky 2007: 65). Indeed, Menem sought to put ‘politics directly at the service of economic priorities’ by presenting economic stabilization as the most important means to stabilize democratic society (Tedesco 2002: 478). He therefore manipulated politics in order to achieve economic ends. The neoliberal agenda installed in Argentina, and Latin America more widely, had a distinct four-point agenda (Munck 2003: 53). First, trade liberalization with exporting a central objective; secondly, privat­ ization and reducing the role of government; thirdly, labour reforms to introduce ‘flexibility’ so as to lower the cost of labour; fourthly, financial liberalization involving liberalization of cross-border cap­ ital movements, and domestic bank deregulation to promote greater integration into the international capital market. Deregulation, liberalization and privatization economically were also accompanied by decentralization and deinstitutionalization politically (Tedesco 2002: 472; Grugel and Riggirozzi 2007: 91; Rock 2002: 65). Decentralization came in the form of transforming the role of federal government, and handing responsibility for areas such as health, education and welfare over to the provinces (Grugel and Riggirozzi 2007: 65). De­ institutionalization came in the form of what O’Donnell (1994: 55–69) calls ‘delegative democracy’, or Tedesco (2002: 474) ‘the politics of informality’. Delegative democracy concerns the vertical nature of accountability in the Argentine system; present through the direct link between the president and the electorate, rooted in Argentina’s traditional preference for a charismatic strongman leading from the front, and responsible for the style of leadership in the sense of often ruling and legislating through presidential decree. This is opposed to more horizontal forms of accountability based on different loci of institutional sites. Informal politics involves the personalization of politics through alliances forged by personal ties (for example, Plan Bunge y Borne), and deinstitutionalization as decisions are removed from formal procedural bodies as a result of this personalization. Furthermore, there was a certain level of contempt and certainly disregard for existing institutions, demonstrated best through Menem’s nepotistic behaviour when expanding the Supreme Court of Justice in order to prevent potential blockages to his radical programme (Tedesco 2002: 474).

‘El Argentinazo’ – the Tango Crisis of 2001/02  The crisis facilitated an inordinate degree of apathy and a concomitant low degree of commitment to the political process in Argentina. This was mostly due to the fact that the socio-economic crisis had had a ‘very corrosive effect on politics’ (Sanchez 2005: 461), generating profound scepticism about the political process. The fleeing of the Casa Rosada by De la Rúa in the presidential helicopter at the height of the protests, the regime’s general impression of incompetence and paralysis in the run-up to the crisis, and the power vacuum that ensued with several presidents in several days until Duhalde emerged, all served to give the perception of political meltdown during the crisis in 2001. However, the fact that democracy survived at all, especially given the recent Argentine history of military coups and dictatorship, is testament to the strength of democracy in Argentina in comparison to the 1970s. Nevertheless, these unique events did have a profound political impact on Argentina. Ana Dinerstein suggests the events of 19/20 December 2001 (El Argen­ tinazo) brought about a fundamental change in the way politics is practised in Argentina (Dinerstein 2002: 7). For Dinerstein, the political significance of these events can best be understood as ‘the site of conjunction’ of past and current transformations in capitalist social relations in Argentina. In other words, the collapse of a particular form of capitalist accumulation strategy (initiated in 1976 and the start of the Dictadura and characterized by financial valorization) resulted in a low degree of commitment to the political process in Argentina. This low degree of commitment was expressed through several elements which were articulated through the consolidation and expansion of resistance that emerged in the form of factory seizures, unemployed workers, barter clubs and asambleas (ibid.: 8). Factory takeovers by the former employees of the closed factories (made unemployed by the ­crisis) peaked in 2001/02 with over ten thousand workers operating over one hundred enterprises (Petras and Veltmeyer 2009: 78). Movements of the unemployed formed into activist groups of piqueteros, who subsequently picketed roads owing to the absence of factories to picket as a result of their closure. This served the same purpose, the paralysis of the circulation of commodities (ibid.: 69). Decisions were made in mass popular assemblies and organization was free from political parties. Trueque, or barter clubs, which were effectively multi-reciprocal exchange clubs, vastly expanded their operations as the severe restriction on money liquidity together with the depreciation of the peso and the fall in real wages exerted a strong downward pressure on living standards (Pearson 2003: 214, 217). Throughout the 38

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country neighbourhood assemblies, or asambleas barriales, met in even middle-class suburbs demanding the return of their savings (Petras and Veltmeyer 2009: 69). This variety of innovative protest and formations of new forms of democratic participation led Dinerstein to conclude that El Argentinazo opened up the political space necessary to bring about a fundamental shift in the way in which politics was practised in Argentina (see also Bonnet 2002; Altamira 2002). According to Dinerstein’s analysis, the ‘Battle of Buenos Aires’ represented ‘negative politics’, the power of the protesters’ negative power based around the slogan of Que se vayan todos (get rid of them all), which, for Dinerstein, signified a shift in Argentine politics for several reasons (Dinerstein 2002: 24). The first of these is that it signified the rejection of ‘the parody of democracy’, or questioned the idea that democracy in Argentina had been consolidated. Secondly, it rejected the violence of capital in the form of the corralito,1 inflation, external debt, financial speculation, devaluation, capital flight, unemployment, poverty, corruption and IMF intervention. Thirdly, it questioned the repressive nature of the laws through which the power of capitalist relations of production are institutionalized; and fourthly, it challenged existing structures that mediate between labour and capital owing to the emergence of alternatives such as the piqueteros or the asambleas barriales (ibid.: 25–7). According to Laura Tedesco (2002: 481), the forms of ‘resistance politics’ that emerged in response to the crisis were the result of a lack of horizontally accountable institutions in Argentine society due to its traditional vertical accountability, a function of strong presidential and personal politics. Therefore, the crisis represented a fundamental rejection of the Menemist model based on elements of neoliberal thinking and the separation of state from society. The large political impact of the crisis can be attributed to the massive legacy of poverty and social exclusion in a country where citizenship had been associated with a range of social and economic rights since Peronist days (Grugel and Riggirozzi 2007: 94). A whole new stratum of society had been impoverished both by the neoliberal restructuring of the 1990s and by the events of the crisis itself. These ‘new poor’ (ibid.: 94) were politicized, vocal and numerically significant. This vision of a new resistance politics of horizontally accountable institutions in Argentine society was not to be. By the end of the first year of Kirchner’s presidency many of these movements barely existed and were in full retreat. The factory takeover movement was all but over, the piqueteros movement was split with fractions supporting Kirchner,

trueque was undermined by a proliferation of social currency that helped facilitate forgery and scandal, and asambleas barriales degenerated into talking shops and participation plummeted after the middle classes were once again able to access their savings after the ending of the freezing of their bank accounts. What accounts for this change? This chapter argues that it was Kirchner’s deliberate forging of a new social contract that co-opted many of these movements, either through integration of their concerns into policy, removal of original grievances through reform, and incorporation of new social fractions into the social basis of Kirchner’s power through adoption of new policy, and also through more direct forms of clientelism. It is to these changes in the Argentine social contract that this chapter now turns. State–society relations under Néstor Kirchner

The drawing in of these new elements of society into a new social contract in Argentina was the direct result of the state absorbing many of the critiques of neoliberalism that had been fostered by civil ­society movements that had formed as a result of the crisis of 2001/02. The result was Kirchnerism, or what Grugel and Riggirozzi (ibid.: 87) term neodesarrollismo. This is a distinctive form of political economy, with important differences to both Peronism and Menemism. The workingclass base of Kirchner’s power was derived from a number of factors related to the domestic realm. Kirchner’s policies served to create a number of winners in Argentine society, among which the urban working classes can be included. Large increases in employment facilitated reductions in poverty from record highs reached as a result of the crisis. Furthermore, specific poverty alleviation programmes and social security programmes, as well as the creation of a macroeconomic environment in Argentina that facilitated the expansion of manufacturing, especially export manufacturing and agro-industry, all served to create natural allies in the government from the working classes. In addition, the existence of conduits between organized labour and the Kirchner administration in the form of unions facilitated a more integrated view of the state–society relationship. These policies served to reconstitute elements of civil society associated with the piqueteros and the fábricas recuperados, drawing them back into traditional institutions that mediated with the state. Maristella Svampa (2008: 83) suggests that the practices of ‘clientel­ ism’ and ‘co-optation’ demonstrate continuity with the old order. Kirchner’s ruling mainly by presidential decree, use of subsidies and gifts in key barrios in Gran Buenos Aires, and use of piqueteros and 40

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trade unions in welfare handouts all represent clientelist practices that conform to old Peronist politics. Identifying state–society relations under Kirchner as simply Peronism, however, is an approach that is not sensitive to the important differences between Kirchner’s particular brand of Peronism and those of the past in Argentina. While his rhetoric was rich in populist language, there was little real substance behind it. Therefore, while he liked to deride business groups involved in privatization, this coexisted with the adhesion to rules of prudent fiscal and monetary policies, as well as a failure to address the issue of depressed real wages (Gerchunoff and Aguirre 2004: 2; Beccaria et al. 2007). His particular mix of policies served to forge a socio-economic alliance that in its totality was qualitatively different from traditional forms of Peronist social contract. Indeed, this socio-economic alliance contains some of the actors that were present in the 1990s, and therefore shares certain characteristics with Menemism. Elements of the middle classes entered this alliance as a result of the consumer boom facilitated by Kirchner’s macroeconomic stabilization and increasing availability of consumer credit. This policy helped undermine the asambleas barriales, as middle-class elements left them once their economic security was stabilized and consumption was reignited. In addition, macroeconomic stability, stimulation of consumer credit, and industrial policy directed at local businesses helped reduce reliance on the trueque system through stimulating consumer demand and the local bourgeoisie. The rest of this section will examine specifically the major differences with both the developmental models enacted by Perón and Menem, thus formulating an argument that Kirchnerism is an example of a unique form of development in Argentina, grounded in a set of state–society relations that represents a ‘bending and moulding’ (Panizza 2005) of historical constellations of power configuration and class sectors in a post-crisis political context, all of which has been shaped by the imperatives of contemporary globalization. Such bending and moulding helped to reintegrate those elements of civil society that emerged from the crisis of 2001/02 into traditional political and economic institutions that mediated with the state and thus forge a new post-crisis social contract. The first major difference with Peronism was in the nature of the link between citizenship and social welfare. As summarized by Grugel and Riggirozzi (2007: 88), ‘Peronism changed the terms of citizenship in Argentina by establishing the pueblo, made up of unionised workers, the urban poor, and the lower-middle classes, as a political actor with

Table 3.1  Strike behaviour in Argentina, 2000–05 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005

No. of strikes

Union led (%)

Non-union led (%)

227 252 301 303 268 344

58 52 39 42 56 77

41 48 61 58 44 23

Source: Etchemendy and Collier (2007)

rights to economic and social inclusion.’ Kirchner’s use of rhetoric echoing such concerns was never backed up by concrete action. For example, his welfare approach centred on programmes such as Plan Familias and Planes Trabajar, which were targeted at specific social groups and not intended to be comprehensive by design. The one programme that was universal, Plan Jefes y Jefas de Hogar, which had been initiated by his predecessor Duhalde, was purposely run down throughout the 2003–07 period through barring the entry of new appli­ cants into the programme. Universal coverage was not a priority of Kirchner’s regime, as this was not part of his social contract with the Argentine public. This is in contrast to previous manifestations of Peronism during the years of Perón himself and the desarrollismo governments. Unlike under Peronism, there was no systematic effort to redirect the gains from growth to the working class, nor was there a real commitment (rhetoric aside) to equating citizenship with universal social welfare. Secondly, Kirchner was able to forge an entirely new corporatist relationship that was fundamentally different to old Peronist corpor­ atism. Etchemendy and Collier (2007: 366) have termed his distinct approach as ‘segmented neocorporatism’; defined as ‘a pattern of peak level negotiation in which monopolistic unions, business associations, and the government coordinate on inflation-targeted, sector-wide wage agreements and minimum wage floors, which apply to a substantial minority of the labour force’. Whereas the union (organized labour)– government relationship under Peronism was very much ‘top down’, Kirchnerism is characterized by more autonomy from both the state and the increasingly fragmented party system (ibid.: 365, 381). This has resulted in a significant number of unions engaging in industrial action in order to manipulate the outcome of negotiations, often against the 42

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wishes of government officials (ibid.: 381; see also Table 3.1). Table 3.1 demonstrates that strikes in Argentina have consistently exceeded their levels during the presidency of Menem, and certainly outstrip those seen during Perón’s first two administrations. Table 3.1 also reflects Kirchner’s ability to reinstitutionalize protest politics in the aftermath of El Argentinazo, with non-union-led protest dropping dramatically during his administration and in the aftermath of the 2001 crisis. This was partially responsible for the drop-off in activity of many of the alternative forms of protest outlined in the previous section. Elements of the piquetero movement were co-opted back into supporting the government, splitting leftist opposition. Protest instead would come from within the more traditional structures of peak organizations such as the CGT and the Confederación de Trabajadores Argentina (CTA). Therefore, elements of civil society that had chosen to protest outside of the space created by the state were brought back into institutional structures, facilitating a reintegration of these elements of civil society into traditional structures that mediated with the state. A third difference concerns a different aspect of the tripartite relationship, that between the government and the business community. The ‘genuine participation of business’ (ibid.: 382) in these tripartite negotiations is arguably unique to Kirchnerism and therefore to Argen­ tine history. Genuine participation of business in tripartite negotiations in Peronism was rare, but under the administration of Kirchner was more systematic. This was due to the institutionalization of the segmented neocorporatist model as outlined above. In fact, this factor represents a final piece in one of the complex puzzles of Kirchnerism. Systematic negotiation and agreements with both organized labour and domestic business have been part of Kirchner’s greater goal of economic development, owing to the need to contain inflation, or more specifically one of the main traditional drivers of Argentine inflation: wage increases. Kirchnerism also shares a number of aspects with Menemism, yet, in a similar fashion to the above analysis of Peronism, contains important points of departure. The first area of difference between Menemism and Kirchnerism is the emphasis on inflation control. Under Menem, the system of convertibilidad was used to peg inflation expectations, combined with liberalization and privatization policies conducted ­under the aegis of improving efficiency. Therefore, the separation of the state from civil society facilitated an erosion of the bonds between the working classes and the Peronist party under Menem. Kirchner,

1,000

Number of agreements

800 600 400 200 0 1990

1992

1994

1996

1998

2000

2002

2004

2006

3.1  Number of g­overnment–union agreements in Argentina, 1991–2006 (source: Etchemendy and Collier 2007)

on the other hand, forged a relationship based more on nationalist/ statist development (Grugel and Riggirozzi 2007: 89; see also Barbeito and Goldberg 2003). In order to facilitate development, policies of macroeconomic stability and economic growth through stimulation of an export industry and limited diversification away from traditional reliance on agro-exports were pursued. The state therefore took on the responsibility for economic growth (Grugel and Riggirozzi 2007: 97), and specifically facilitated this through its SCRER2 policy and stimulation of exports, as well as an accumulation of reserves to create confidence in the domestic economy (ibid.: 97–8). This necessarily involved a more imbricated relationship between the state and elements of society where both played a larger role in facilitating economic development, which represented the glue that bound them together. This discourse of development and subsequent reconfiguration of state–society relations was also reflected in the (neo)corporatist structures described earlier in this section. The links and conduits between the Kirchner administration and organized labour movements are different to those in the Menem years, and have facilitated much more cooperation and agreement than under Menemism (see Figure 3.1; Etchemendy and Collier 2007: 381). This in turn feeds into differences in the tripartite relationship. Genuine cooperation and negotiation between the business community and organized labour under Kirchnerism was not present in the Menem years, owing to the nature of his relationship with the trade unions. Therefore, the segmented neocorporatism present in Kirchnerism represents a new arrangement in Argentina’s history. 44

Argentina’s relations with international capital fundamentally changed under Kirchner. First, his tough negotiations with the IMF and other creditors over the restructuring of the defaulted debt served to isolate Argentina from international capital markets. The significant haircut achieved by this restructuring combined with Kirchner’s judicious drawing down of Argentine debt to much more manageable levels represents an attempt to break the structural nature of debt in Argentine economic history, and is arguably unique to Kirchnerism as Peronism and Menemism both oversaw large increases in the Argen­tine debt burden. Furthermore, the early repayment of the entire outstanding $9.8 billion debt facility that Argentina had with the IMF meant that IMF influence, a factor shaping national–international relations in Argentina since the end of Perón’s first administration, all but disappeared. However, Kirchner was careful not to preside over a total rupture with the international community. While he engaged in hard negotiations with international creditors, a restructuring agreement covering the vast majority of owners of defaulted debt was achieved. This desire to strengthen the Argentine economy in relation to international institutions such as the IMF was matched by a desire to foster relations with other countries in Latin America (Grugel and Riggirozzi 2007: 99). This was the result of push factors such as the desire to forge greater economic independence for South America, as well as perhaps more pull factors, such as the need for the Venezuelan government to purchase Argentine bonds owing to international capital markets being closed off. Such an attitude has resulted in the pursuit of closer relationships with Venezuela, Brazil, Chile and Bolivia through Mercosur3 (Tussie and Heidrich 2007), and a commitment to a regional energy market in April 2005 (Grugel and Riggirozzi 2007: 99). However, events were to present this policy with some major challenges. The cutting off of gas exports to Chile during the energy shortage in the winter of 2007, as well as the role of las papeleras,4 created points of tension that damaged Kirchner’s desire to improve regional relations. A final consideration is that of foreign investment, and relations with foreign business – namely TNCs. While Kirchner was happy to accommodate foreign interests in domestic Argentine investment, he was more hostile towards MNCs looking to initiate interest in Argentina.5 This approach is different to more traditional policies associated with Peronism, which viewed almost all TNC activity in the domestic economy as potentially damaging. Such an approach by Kirchner was also mirrored in the financial sector. While he maintained links with 45

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Globalization and Kirchnerism

the sector in order to help his plans to expand personal credit to facilitate the consumer boom, and there has been no hostility towards the banks in particular,6 there was not the active promotion of their interests as experienced during the Menem years through institutional links with the state such as personnel in the administration. Conclusion: towards strong publics?

This book suggests that while assessment of those forces that control the state is important, it is often the constitution of civil society and how its mutual constitution with the state leads to the shaping of a social contract which form the basis of a state’s political economy (see introductory chapter). Furthermore, such findings must be placed within the context of contemporary globalization, which itself is shaped by the forces of global civil society and are a function of the hegemonic institutions, ideologies and correlations of social forces present in the social fabric. With neoliberalism as the dominant global ideology it is this form of capital accumulation and associated understanding of the relationship between state and civil society which shape the ‘limits of the possible’ (Santizo 2006) for any method of capital accumulation present in domestic political economy. Applying this framework to Argentina during the presidency of Kirchner reveals important points of consideration in the context of strong publics. Many of the radical and experimental forms of resist­ance that emerged from the crisis of 2001/02 had either largely dis­appeared (such as the fábricas recuperados or the asambleas barriales) or had been largely co-opted by the state (such as the piquetero movement), and Ana Dinerstein’s assertion that a new radicalized form of politics had emerged appeared to be premature (Dinerstein 2002). However, this chapter has attempted to show that the crisis of 2001/02 nevertheless led to important and lasting changes in the Argentine social contract owing more widely to the absorption of many of the ideas of these movements into state policy. Shifts in the social basis of support for Kirchner and his Frente para la Victoria led to a changing relationship between society and the state as a result of pressures from civil society movements, not only in terms of those actors and institutions that interacted with the state but also how they interacted with the state. Therefore, a renegotiation of the tripartite corpora­ tist relationship facilitated ‘segmented neocorporatism’ in terms of the state’s relationship with labour, and the ‘genuine participation of business’ with state policy. This was built upon the foundations of a consensus around the principles of nationalist/statist development, 46

Notes 1  This expressive name was a ­label for the restrictions i­m­ posed on 1 December 2001 by economy ­minister Domingo Cavallo, which limited bank withdrawals to $250 a week for every Argentine citizen. 2  This policy of a ‘Stable and Competitive Real Exchange Rate’ (Damill et al. 2007: 27) meant in practice the maintenance of a rate of exchange with the US dollar of ­between 2.8 and 3.1 pesos, and a

steady depreciation of the Real Exchange Rate (RER). 3  Interview with Diana Tussie, FLACSO, 5 June 2007, Buenos Aires. 4  The dispute between Argentina and Uruguay over the construction of paper mills on the Rio de la Plata. 5  Interview with Pablo Heidrich, researcher at FLASCO, 10 April 2007, Buenos Aires. 6  Interview with Argentine banking industry expert, 17 May 2007, Buenos Aires. 47

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with elements of the urban working classes, middle classes, national bourgeoisie and fractions of the agricultural oligarchic elites forming the core of this consensus. Historical forms of political economy certainly shaped this agenda, with strong roots in Peronism. In addition, elements of neoliberalism from Menemism were interwoven into this social contract, which produced a social safety net response to poverty. In turn, neoliberal globalization has also shaped this agenda, exerting its influences through transmission mechanisms such as international trade. However, Kirchner has managed to mitigate other mechanisms that have traditionally led to the influence of international capital upon the domestic Argentine political economy. In its totality, elements of both populism and neoliberalism combined to create a new form of political economy in Argentina under Kirchner, one that has been called neo­desarrollismo (Grugel and Riggirozzi 2007; Grugel 2009). Kirchnerism is an example of a unique form of development in Argentina, grounded in a set of state–society relations that represent a ‘bending and moulding’ (Panizza 2005) of historical constellations of power configuration and class sectors in a post-crisis political context of strong publics, all of which has been shaped by the imperatives of contemporary globalization. This process demonstrates that democratization in Argentina in the post-crisis period has not been unidirectional. While certain elements of the radical social agenda that emerged have all but dis­appeared, others have endured through absorption into mainstream state policy. This fact supports the assertions in the introductory chapter of this book that democratization is best seen as an ‘ongoing, dynamic process [rather than] as a final end state’ (Barrett et al. 2008: 29).

4 | Civil society–state relations in left-led El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua1 B arry C annon and M o H ume

Most of the literature on the ‘pink tide’ has understandably concentrated on South America, where the most notable left governments have emerged. Little attention has been paid, however, to Central America – exceptions are Close (2009) on Nicaragua and Díaz (2008) on pre-Funes El Salvador – despite the fact that this region was the centre of intense activity by the revolutionary left in the 1980s, leading to a ferocious right-wing counter-offensive in the context of the Cold War, which resulted in devastating civil conflicts. Furthermore, with the elections of Daniel Ortega of the revolutionary Sandinista movement (FSLN) in Nicaragua (2007); Mauricio Funes of the erstwhile left guerrilla movement FMLN (Faribundo Martí Front for National Liberation) in El Salvador (2009); and the social democratic Álvaro Colom in Guate­ mala (2008–12), Central America has not been immune to the ‘pink tide’ sweeping the wider region. The 2009 coup against left-leaning Manuel Zelaya in Honduras further signals the region’s importance for understanding the backlash to broader ‘pink tide’ politics in the context of democratization, and de-democratization processes. This chapter seeks to redress this gap in the literature. It is based on three case studies – El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua. Using the framework set out in the opening chapter, we argue that historic continuities within Central America, namely the continued presence of deep structural inequalities, remain central to the region’s politics, but that these struggles are frequently sidetracked into unproductive personalistic and partisan politics. These findings open up wider questions about the blurring of boundaries between state, civil society and market and its impact on democratization, especially within the current context of globalized neoliberal socio-economic structures. In this way the chapter seeks to underline the continued relevance and importance of analysing Central America in the context of left-led Latin America. In the opening chapter Kirby and Cannon set out three key points with regard to democratization and civil society’s role within it. First, 48

Democratization processes in El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua in left-led Latin America

Following independence, liberal reform in Central America sought to break up traditional socio-economic structures inherited from the colonial era and transform the state in order to facilitate an exportoriented economy based on agricultural commodities. In El Salvador this resulted in the development of a unified national bourgeoisie with strong institutions that were subservient to its needs. In Nicaragua and Honduras, local elites remained divided and the state weak, with episodes of US intervention in both. Each of the countries as a result developed different political regimes with different patterns of state–society relations. El Salvador developed sharply polarized military-authoritarian regimes which often used managed elections and ample coercion to control and suppress dissent with the full cooperation of economic elites. In Nicaragua and Honduras, traditional dictatorships developed, based on patronage and clientelism, with a limited use of coercion and ample corruption. In Nicaragua the state was dominated by the US-backed Somoza clan, while in Honduras it was led by military personnel, again supported by the USA, but with individual rather than institutional rule. In each state civil society was limited to bourgeois elites, with occasional reform gestures made to trade unions and peasant groups (Mahoney 2001). This situation changed substantially in the 1970s and 1980s. In Nicar­ agua in 1979, the popular, socialist Sandinista government swept away the Somoza clan, which had been in power since 1932. This led to a long period of war against the US-supported and funded Contras, which finally resulted in the Sandinistas losing power in the 1990 elections to a US-supported conservative coalition. In El Salvador the existing military-bureaucratic regime was replaced in 1979 with 49

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democratization must not be seen as a unilinear process but rather as a constant, even daily, struggle between democratizing and dedemocratizing tendencies. Secondly, democratization processes need to be placed within the wider socio-economic and structural contexts of neoliberal globalization, paying specific attention to the interaction between the state, civil society and the market. Finally, civil society cannot be seen as a fixed entity, but is rather one which is shaped by struggles between contending social forces at specific historical conjunctures. The question this chapter seeks to ask then is how has Central America been faring in terms of democratization in the current conjuncture of a left-dominated Latin America.

a non-democratic, civilian regime with heavy support, both military and otherwise, from the United States, in order to pursue the war against the revolutionary forces of the FMLN. Finally, in Honduras the dictatorial regime in power from 1932 was replaced in a managed transition to civilian, party rule in 1982. Honduras, however, was also used as a base for US counter-revolutionary campaigns in El Salvador and Nicaragua; thus, the military remained a powerful institution in Honduran politics until the 1990s. The wars had devastating impacts on Central America with 300,000 killed, 2 million refugees and an already weak social and economic infra­structure destroyed. The path to peace was finally sealed in 1987 with the Esquipulas II agreement, which marked the beginning of a large and complex peace-building strategy in Central America, launched by the international community, with democratization processes at its centre (Kurtenbach 2007). The war in El Salvador formally ended with the signing of the Chaputepec Peace Accords in January 1992, while the end of the Nicaraguan civil war came with the defeat of the FSLN in the 1990 presidential elections. Despite massive international ­investment, what resulted, however, were ‘low intensity democracies’, which go little beyond electoralism (Torres-Rivas 2007). The public in general suffers from a ‘democratic disillusion’, owing to such factionalism and the inability of the state to solve problems of inequality, poverty and injustice (Cerdas-Cruz 1993). Although El Salvador and Nicaragua have strong civil society organizations emerging from the disbanded ­revolutionary movements, these were frozen out of policymaking by the right-wing governments in both states and, in the case of Nicaragua, many continue to be excluded by the left government of Daniel Ortega. Arising partially from this situation, high levels of crime and violence have been further compromising state capacity in each of the three countries. El Salvador and Honduras had homicide rates in 2008 of 52 and 58 people respectively murdered out of every 100,000, compared to a Latin American average of 25 for every 100,000 (2006), while Nicaragua, however, comes well below all three at 13 for every 100,000 in 2008 (PNUD 2010: 68–9).2 Many of these murders, as with much crime in the region, are drug related, owing to Central America being a crucial transport route for drugs from the Andean producing countries to the North American and European consuming countries. Large, criminal and competing transnational gangs have developed to manage this lucrative trade, with the financial sector becoming involved to facilitate money laundering at a national and regional level, and with 50

El Salvador’s turn to the left: challenges to redemocratization?  Demo­ cratization in El Salvador coincided with an aggressive neoliberalism developed by the right-wing party ARENA, which held power from 1989 to 2009. Throughout ARENA’s twenty-year tenure, state institutions were widely perceived to serve the interests of a minority and were closely linked to party objectives (Wolf 2009). Likewise, civil society was 51

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local youth gangs having a role at a micro-level in terms of distribution and other tasks. State response to this situation, however, has been weak, with key political actors in the region ­having economic interests in this fast-growing market for the provision of private security and of arms, but also in some of the more illicit acts, such as money laundering and drugs. Throughout Latin America, ex-military have been central to the private security industry, which Argueta argues allows them to maintain ‘informal mechanisms of control’ (Argueta 2010: 6). Evidence from Guatemala and Panama suggests high-level involvement of state actors in drug gangs (see Pearce 2010). Research into the 2007 murder of three Salvadorean members of the Central American parliament indicated their links to drugs gangs (see El Faro 2010). Hence the historical weakness of the state in the region, exacer­ bated by globalization, has allowed such criminal activity to grow, while simultaneously being weakened further by it. In sum, the state in each of the three countries has not experienced a transformation near enough sufficient to deliver ‘better, more secure lives’ (Grugel 2002: 67) to its citizens, seen as a necessary condition for successful democratization. Nor has a transformation taken place in the power balance in civil society, with elites remaining in control of key state institutions and the state favouring an elitist, as against a popularly based, ‘civil society’. Meanwhile, globalization, in the form of neoliberal restructuring, has further favoured those elites. They have benefited from the privatization of public assets and from free trade agreements, while poverty and inequality remain static or have deepened, adversely affecting lower and some middle sectors (Kurten­ bach 2007: 21–2). The pervasiveness of criminality has subverted the state at a national level, even replacing it in some local areas. At the very least, therefore, democratization has advanced little beyond electoral formalism and has brought few substantive benefits to the ‘have less’. What, if anything, has changed with the arrival of left or left-of-centre governments in power in each of these three countries? The following three sections look at each case country in turn, starting with El Salvador.

restricted to a few organizations whose ideology was acceptable to the interests of capital, such as the Salvadorean Foundation for Economic and Social Development (FUSADES) and the National Association of Private Enterprise (ANEP). Other civil society organizations with arguably more progressive agendas, many of which had grown out of the FMLN guerrilla movement, were firmly excluded and formed an unoffi­ cial opposition often in conjunction, though not always in agreement, with the FMLN. This not only led to charges of a weak state, political exclusion and polarization, but also of electoral authoritarianism since the state was widely perceived to protect minority interests rather than provide public services (ibid.: 433). The swearing-in of Mauricio Funes leading an FMLN government on 1 June 2009 challenged this hegemony and provided a real ‘test’ to both the procedures and substance of democracy in El Salvador (Wood 2001). In his inauguration speech, Funes promised a government of national unity and has made a pragmatic effort to reach across historic party lines. Through field research interviews and observations we found that advances had been made to include historically excluded civil society sectors in policy-making but that gains are qualified. A Social and Economic Council was set up to guide state policy, led by a chief government adviser, Alex Segovia Cacerés, with broad NGO and private sector participation. The Funes government has included important elite families as backers and/or state appointees, a move that has heralded criticism from the ranks of the FMLN. The aim of this strategy was to include more ‘progressive’ elements of the traditional Salvadorean oligarchy in a pluralistic, modernizing government, thus increasing its room for policy manoeuvre while not entirely alienating local elites and their international allies.3 Hence, civil society, which previously was associated with NGOs related to ARENA and business interests, has now become more pluralistic, with representation from those NGOs traditionally associated with the FMLN and ‘progressive’ elements of the traditional oligarchy. This has led to a cautious shift in the power balance within civil society. Although civil society groups previously shut out from policy-making now feel some opening, new structures such as the Social and Economic Council have had little direct policy impact.4 These strategies have also opened up breaches within the FMLN movement, with the Funes government seen as hesitant, and the links to bourgeois elites viewed with suspicion. Such polarization also reinforces previous patterns endemic in state structures, namely state appointments dictated by party loyalty. This parti­san polarization of the Salvadorean state points to the historic blur52

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ring of boundaries between civil society, political parties and state institutions. Moreover, it points to the highly exclusionary nature of these bodies. Several leaders from NGOs and academia historically associ­ated with the FMLN took up posts in the new government, ­although the massive sacking of personnel that usually follows a change in government did not occur. Many state institutions remain dominated by functionaries appointed by the previous ARENA administration, owing to the belated introduction of a labour stability law for government functionaries one month before Funes was sworn in, an act that was widely seen as an attempt by ARENA to ensure its continued control of the state apparatus (Molina 2009). On taking up office, the Funes government found that several state institutions had spent large parts of their budgets before the change of government, a prevalence of ‘ghost’ projects that did not exist yet cost the national purse millions of dollars, and ‘ghost’ staff who failed to show up to work, but received payment.5 This is indicative of high levels of corruption and is pertinent to our analysis of political manoeuvring that puts minority interests before effective governance. Squabbles within government departments between old functionaries and new appointees hinder reform. The effects on the former incumbents are seen both in retrenchment and internal division. Taking advantage of increased levels of criminal violence, historic right-wing groups such as ARENA, ANEP and the Chamber of Commerce charge Funes’s government with ‘ungovernability’ and ‘lawlessness’ (Mayen 2010). Thinly veiled warnings from key ARENA figures such as former president Alfredo Cristiani indicated they would do whatever it took to protect their interests (Rojas Bolaños 2010: 106; for a commentary on the Salvadorean press, see Martínez Uribe 2009). This highlights threats to Funes’s limited space in which to manoeuvre and also points to the determination of the right to protect their ‘system of freedoms’ over democratic values (a theme that is discussed in more detail in the Honduran case). Nonetheless, the position of the right has weakened following the electoral defeat. In late 2009, a new party, GANA, was formed, weakening ARENA’s position in the Legislative Assembly. GANA (Grand National Unity Alliance) is an offshoot formed by dissident ARENA parliamentary representatives and their elite backers, which quickly acquired power within parliament, further dividing the right (Freedman 2009). Continuity is also evident at the international level. With its dollarized economy, its membership of the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) with the USA, and its huge population of migrants, El Salvador is highly globalized. This limits reform possibilities for

fear of response from the USA and local transnationalized elites. The impact of this can be seen also at a regional level in its relationship with other ‘pink tide’ governments. Funes has distanced himself from Venezuela, despite many FMLN municipal administrations having links to the Venezuelan-led Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA) trade and solidarity association (see Muhr, this volume). He has also expressed support for the Porfirio Lobo administration in Honduras, even though many Latin American countries, including Brazil, have refused to recognize its legitimacy. These factors provide positive and negative indications for demo­ cratization in El Salvador. On the positive side, increased inclusion of previously excluded civil society groups in policy-making structures has opened up possibilities for progressive, inclusive measures to further democratization processes. On the negative side, the continued patterns of polarization along party lines of many civil society and state institutions (at national and local levels), and the predominant influence of market-oriented ideology and US influence, seriously inhibit the democratizing potential of these measures. In this context, the fluidity between civil society, parties and the state reinforces the view that these cannot be analysed as neatly autonomous, owing to deep political influences and allegiances and the legacy of a state that has been built on the interests of a narrow minority.

Democracy in crisis: the coup against President Manuel Zelaya in Honduras  Honduras is perhaps the most dramatic example of dedemocratization in Latin America and the site of a violent backlash against ‘pink tide’ politics. In June 2009, President Manuel Zelaya Rosales was ousted from office in a coup enacted by economic and political elites. To most observers, including the members of the Organ­ization of American States (OAS), the European Union (EU) and large numbers of Honduran citizens, this was a straightforward coup (Páramo 2010). As the news filtered out, thousands gathered to register their shock and dismay at the presidential palace in Tegucigalpa. A de facto government was established by Roberto Micheletti, president of Congress. During that period, the official message was clear: a coup had not occurred; rather Zelaya’s expulsion was understood as a case of constitutional secession of powers with Micheletti as ‘interim’ president. Popular protests were brutally repressed and the de facto regime defied the international community to remain in power until January 2010. Scheduled elections were held in November 2009, which, while severely questioned, allowed the installation of Porfirio ‘Pepe’ 54

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Lobo of the National Party as president of Honduras on 27 January 2010. In order to understand this process, it is important to trace the controversial presidency of Zelaya. Manuel Zelaya (2005–09) was the epitome of an oligarchic president, coming from Honduras’s economic and political elite, which, like its neighbours, is dominated by a small number of families who also have key roles in the state. For example, Carlos Flores Facussé was president between 1998 and 2002 and has been an important supporter of the coup government. Eighty per cent of the newspapers circulating in the country belong to one family, the Canahuati, while another, the Ferrari, own one of the largest television groups, Televicentro, with five stations, and seventeen radio stations (Torres Calderón 2009). Nonetheless, in the last two years of his term Zelaya broke with history and attempted to engage with popularly based social movements and NGOs. Examples of actions in this direction were his holding of regular popular assemblies in the presidential palace, and implementation of measures seen as hostile to elite business interests, such as raising the minimum wage by almost 40 per cent in 2009 (Cordero 2009). The most contentious proposal, however, was to hold a referendum, at the same time as the elections in November 2009, on the installation of a Constituent Assembly to redraft the country’s Constitution. This was a step too far for the Honduran elite and, in their view, firmly allied Zelaya with Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez. This was the final straw that led to Zelaya’s overthrow on 28 June 2009. After the coup, the Honduran state retrenched firmly back to its servile position with respect to the oligarchy, while ‘civil society’ became polarized into two main camps. Unlike mainstream media coverage, which presented a simple pro- or anti-Zelaya division in Honduras,6 we found through field research that in effect there were pro- and anticoup factions, with the latter divided into two main groups: those who were originally supporters of the president and those who supported the return of the constitutional order, but did not necessarily support Zelaya. The social base of these groups consists of, among others, indigenous, peasants, feminists, progressive sections of the Catholic Church, labour unions, LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) groups, with Zelaya supporters from the Liberal Party. Those supporting the coup are business groups, the media, the Church hierarchy, including the Archbishop of Tegucigalpa, Cardinal Oscar Andrés Rodriguez, the two main political parties, the human rights ombudsman, the armed forces, the police and, crucially, the main institutions of the state. Mass media campaigns and marches, heavily protected by the

army and police, have framed these groups within a careful discourse of national unity and the claim to be the true voice of ‘civil society’, while they call themselves the ‘whites’ in an effort to symbolize peace and purity. This stands in stark contrast with media portrayals of the anti-coup groups, who were dubbed ‘mobs’ and ‘undesirables’. In more than a rhetorical act, these groups have rejected the label ‘civil society’ in favour of what they consider the more inclusive terminology of National Popular Resistance Front (FNRP). Research informants emphasized that social divisions were not a consequence of the coup but were made visible by it, at both the ­national and the international level. These fissures are further crossed by ideological views of democracy. Pro-coup groups understand demo­ cracy as the existing institutional configuration that benefits elite ­interests: order is prioritized over human rights as the massive repression of social movements since 2009 has attested.7 One business leader suggested that this ‘peaceful’ handover of power was in fact a ‘great test for Honduran democracy’ and not a coup at all.8 Anticoup groups seek a more inclusive form of democracy, with a more progressive conception of the state and a ‘new social pact’, the central aim of the FNRP (Moreno 2010b). Hence, Honduran civil society is fractured between those who recognize the current Lobo administration and those who reject it, who are active in the FNRP and demand a new social pact. At the heart of this struggle is the question of what constitutes ‘democracy’ and whose needs it serves. Honduras also illustrates vividly the impact of globalization in contemporary democratization struggles. Zelaya had taken Honduras into the Venezuelan-led ALBA initiative in 2008, and many identified the coup as a strategy to defeat the advance of that initiative with its close alliance with social movements in the region and its rejection of neoliberal conceptions of international cooperation, such as free trade agreements. Many respondents alleged that conservative elements within the US establishment, as well as sections of the Miami Cuban and Venezuelan right, advised the coup plotters. The close involvement of the United States in brokering agreements on the coup underlined Honduras’s political and economic dependence on that state. The failure to return Zelaya to power, the lengthy period needed to return him permanently to Honduras and the continuance in power of the Lobo administration, despite questions about its democratic and hence international legitimacy, reinforce this reading’s plausibility (Moreno 2010a). In Honduras, hence, we find both state and civil society as terrains of struggle between two contending forces, with differing social 56

Nicaragua: civil society or ‘sociedad sí vil’?  Daniel Ortega’s return to power in January 2007, for the first time since the FSLN’s (Sandinista) defeat in elections in 1990, ended sixteen years of conservative rule in Nicaragua. While the Ortega government claims that it is aiming to restore the social advances of the Sandinista revolution (1979–90), dismantled since its defeat, Ortega’s re-election as president has instead seen Nicaragua experience a deepening polarization between the government and the social forces supporting it on the one hand and, on the other, many prominent NGOs – many of them historically linked to Sandinismo – the media, particularly the print media, and opposition parties. This polarization finds a focal point in the figures of Daniel Ortega and his wife, Rosario Murillo. This polarization is also philosophically and ideologically based on different conceptions of democracy, with the nature and role of the state, that of civil society and their interrelationship central to these differences. The government insists that state power must be restored after the damage inflicted on it by neoliberalism, and central to this is the restoration of popular power and the rebalancing of state– civil society relations. The Ortega-led government seeks to achieve this restoration of popular power by two principal means – popular participation and social programmes aimed at the poorest sectors of society. The main vehicle for the FSLN government to establish popular participation is through the Citizen Power Councils (CPCs), also known as Citizen Power Cabinets. CPCs are neighbourhood-based committees with the officially stated objective of improving local access to services. Civil society in this conception, therefore, is about people engaging directly with the state. The second element in the restoration of popular power, social programmes, is directly related to the first, in that CPCs also administer the flagship government projects, Zero Hunger, whereby local women receive animals and seeds to allow them 57

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bases and holding distinct views of what constitutes democracy and democratization, divisions equally reflected at the international level, most notably in the Americas. Whether this conflict will eventually result in further democratization or de-democratization will depend on the outcome of the struggle between the contending forces within Honduras and the impact of the international context on that struggle. It remains to be seen how Zelaya’s return to Honduras in May 2011, as part of the accord brokered in Cartagena, Colombia, by President Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia and President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, will influence these outcomes.

to farm on a small scale, and Zero Profit, whereby local people can get access to microloans to start small enterprises. CPCs, along with the local community, identify the people who would most benefit from these government schemes, acting in effect as the liaison mechanism between the neighbourhood and the state. These actions are framed within a wider geopolitical strategy, whereby the FSLN government seeks to achieve greater room for manoeuvre for such policy experimentation through the establishment of alliances with new international actors, while attempting to refrain from overly alienating other key actors with considerable power over Nicaragua. Nicaragua has joined the Venezuelan-led Petrocaribe and ALBA initiatives, allowing it to avail itself of cheap oil at low credit rates, as well as accessing considerable funding for development projects. Equally, Nicaragua has formed a close relationship with Russia, leading to a number of preferential deals. Nonetheless, it has maintained scrupulously circumspect relations with the IMF, ensuring prompt payment of debt, a crucial issue for this heavily indebted nation, although the Ortega government has managed to alienate key donors owing to its disputes with NGOs. Field research carried out by the authors shows that CPCs have been met with great scepticism, if not outright hostility, by traditional ‘civil society’, mostly NGOs which have been historically aligned with the FSLN. After the fall of the Sandinista revolution, the NGO sector expanded enormously in Nicaragua, supported by international co­ operation funds aimed at strengthening ‘civil society’. The arrival of an FSLN government caused existing splits within the NGO community to widen, creating an insider and outsider status in their relations with the state. Ortega and the first lady, Rosario Murillo, have attacked NGOs, with the latter calling them ‘sociedad sí vil’ – ‘vile society’ – a play on the Spanish for civil society – sociedad civil (Murillo 2008). Links between NGOs and US funders associated with political meddling in Latin American politics (that is, USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy, NED) – not least in Nicaragua – have been questioned. Furthermore, government officials interviewed question NGO claims to representativeness, owing to their unelected status, unlike government. While these critiques may be valid with regard to NGOs more generally, they must be considered within the conflictual politics of Nicaragua. In 2008 the government accused a number of national and international NGOs, including Oxfam GB, of money laundering. Feminist organizations in particular were also targeted for government criticism. Fieldwork shows that many NGO personnel, especially from 58

Conclusion: civil-society–state relations in left-led Central America – democratization or de-democratization?

­ he principal aim of this chapter has been to assess prospects for T democratization in Central America in the context of the shift to the 59

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women’s organizations, believe that this is linked to their opposition to the criminalization of therapeutic abortion and to their support for Ortega’s stepdaughter, Zoilámerica Narvaez, who accused him of sexual abuse in the late 1990s.9 The accusations against these organizations are thought to have emerged also owing to these NGOs being seen as competitors with the Frente (FSLN), and hence the state, both for consciences and for resources. These developments have had a mixed reaction within the NGO sector, ranging from vehement opposition to the government, rejection of its behaviour, but with a reluctance to enter into conflict, and active cooperation among some sectors. The most notable reaction, however, has been the first, with many NGOs, supported by the media, accusing the government of a totalitarianism similar to that of the Somozas, pointing to the CPCs in particular as a means to that end.10 This is based on an evaluation of the CPCs as sectarian and exclusive in character, inhibiting existing organizational models and acting as indoctrination mechanisms. They are seen to reduce citizen autonomy of thought and action, occupy increasing numbers of social spaces and act as gatekeepers for access to social goods. The different interpretations of CPCs are emblematic of the polarized views on the Sandinista government led by Daniel Ortega. The government argues that their policies are instruments to challenge neoliberalism and replicate historic revolutionary structures. Critics interviewed argue that the government is itself neoliberal owing to the business interests of Ortega and his continued cooperation with international financial institutions, including capital. While the government sees its policies as the beginnings of a new pact between society and the state, its most ferocious critics see it as a totalitarian project aimed at perpetuating Ortega and the FSLN in power. The government claims that polarization is media driven and mostly Managua-based, but many fear that it is so acute that it has caused irreparable damage to the political process.11 Poll evidence suggests that polarization directly affects the Nicaraguan public’s trust in both government and civil society. Thus, it is difficult to imagine in the current context how these diametrically opposed visions can be reconciled, and trust in political elites, and their civil society allies, strengthened (La Tribuna 2010).

left in the region. In general, evidence supports the contention that in the three countries studied, there is potential for both increased democratization but also dangers for the blocking of such potential and indeed the reversal of existing democratic gains. Evidence found provides four supporting arguments for this position. First, clear evidence was found of advances and reversals in demo­ cratization in each of the three countries. Each country presented cases of increased popular participation in decision-making processes which went beyond mere electoralism. In each, however, this was often unsuccessful, restricted, or carried within it potential for democratic reversal, with Honduras as the most notable example. The case studies also indicate that democratization and de-democratization processes do not take place in a linear fashion, but rather each case shows coexisting democratizing and de-democratizing tendencies. Secondly, research findings emphasize the continued centrality of structural inequalities to democratization struggles in Central America. These, however, should be analysed within the heritage of weak states, divided elites and foreign interference, which can and does divert such struggles into polarizing, personalistic politics with little democratizing potential. Here ‘civil society’ is circumstantially defined since the power arrangements of each case include and exclude different characterizations of civil society. This is key to understanding the ebbs and flows of the political process, as who holds state power can help define who is included in ‘actually existing’ civil society, and those groups which dominate civil society can equally help related political factions gain power over the state. Hence, the partisan links of civil society in El Salvador can open or close political space, depending on which party is in power. In Honduras, social movements against the coup reject the label of civil society, while the government disqualifies and represses those grouped in the FNRP. The state engages only with an ‘official’ civil society of organizations linked to church and business sectors. In Nicaragua the contestation over the ‘civil society space’ is played out between the state-designated CPCs and those NGOs which are excluded by the state and reviled by the presidential couple. All three cases point not only to the dialectical nature of state–civil society relations in the face of the impact of capital and its effects of poverty and inequality, but to the subordination of the public interest to the so-called ‘freedoms’ of a narrow elite. This brings up a third issue, related to the level and radical ­nature of reform, and indeed the very meaning of democracy. All three cases, and Honduras in particular, point to the limitations posed to 60

Notes 1  This chapter is adapted from an earlier article published in Democratization. Thanks to the publishers for permission to reprint extracts from that article. 2  The lower figures for homicide in Nicaragua, equally reflected in lower levels of gang membership, are said to be due to that country’s more traditional social and economic structure, higher levels of social organization, and a police force with close community ties, the last two being results of the Nicaraguan revolution (PNUD 2010: 113, Box 4.4). 3  Author interview with government functionary and leading FMLN activist, July 2010. 4  Author interview with director of feminist NGO, San Salvador, July 2010. 5  Author interviews with two state employees (January 2010)

revealed how they were encouraged to go on a ‘spending spree’ before the change of administration. In one case, the interviewee claimed that the office spent $400,000 on ­stationery in an institution with ­severely weakened operational ­capacity whose priorities lie elsewhere. 6  For an example, see an article by the BBC, ‘Q&A: political crisis in Honduras’, at www.bbc.co.uk/ news/world-latin-america-13559359, accessed 9 June 2011. 7  See Amnesty International (2009) and Inter American Commission on Human Rights, ‘Honduras, human rights and the coup d’état’ (December 2009), available at: cidh.org/pdf%20files/HONDURAS2009ENG.pdf. For reports on the Lobo government, see ‘IACHR concerned about human rights violations in Honduras’ available 61

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democratizing measures by the threat of interference by local and international economic actors, if key oligarchic interests are jeopardized. In other words, market interests circumscribe the actions of the state and weigh heavily on the designation of different sectors as ‘civil society’, confirming the porousness of boundaries between state, market and civil society. These findings emphasize further the limits to the current left projects throughout Latin America within the context of an ideo­logic­ally weakened but institutionally persistent neoliberal governance. Finally, the chapter highlights the usefulness of studying Central America in this respect, since few areas in Latin America have been quite so exposed to the combination of extreme oligarchic power and outside interference. This has heightened ideological and economic polarization within these countries, with a determining effect on their political processes. As this chapter shows, in the context of the ‘pink tide’ this can provide valuable data on how these processes can be affected negatively by personalized politics and elite interests, the latter further strengthened by neoliberalism and globalization.

at: www.cidh.org/Comunicados/ English/2010/54-10eng.htm, accessed 6 September 2010. For more recent updates on ongoing human rights abuses, see the regular reports by Honduran human rights organizations and see Informe sobre Derechos Humanos y Conflictividad en Centroamérica 2009–2010, available at: fespad.org.sv/documentos/ informe-sobre-derechos-humanos-yconflictividad-en-centroamerica-

2009-2010.pdf, accessed 8 September 2010. 8  Interview with industrialist, San Pedro Sula, 22 January 2010. 9  Author interview with women’s NGO representative, August 2009. See also Kampwirth (2008). 10  Author interview with NGO representative, Managua, August 2009. 11  Author interview with media expert, Managua, August 2009.

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5 | Rafael Correa’s government, social movements and civil society in Ecuador C arlos de la T orre 1

On 30 September 2010, all hell broke loose in Ecuador. About one thousand officers from the country’s National Police, together with some elements of the military, staged a rebellion in several cities across the country. Denouncing a new law that they said would unfairly cut their benefits, the striking police stopped traffic with barricades and burning tyres, shouted anti-government slogans, and made their demands against a government they said did not represent their interests. Although the insurrection involved a small percentage of the 42,000-strong police force, the protesters used very effective disruptive methods that they know well; normally they are in charge of repressing social movement protests that use the same tactics. After the uprising began, at about 11 a.m., President Rafael Correa went to the police headquarters in Quito. Apparently thinking his charisma would suffice to appease the striking police, Correa attempted to convince them that the benefits in the new legislation were adequate and to persuade them to end their strike. But the attempt did not go well. Booed and hissed by the policemen and their families, Correa was prevented from delivering his speech and incautiously lost his temper. According to witnesses quoted in the New York Times, the president ‘loosened his tie and opened his shirt as if to show he was not wearing a bulletproof vest’. ‘If you want to kill the president, here he is. Kill him, if you want to. Kill him if you are brave enough,’ Correa was quoted as saying (Romero 2010). Correa’s appeal to masculinity irritated the police, who felt that the president was provoking them and that he did not trust or respect them. As Correa left the police headquarters, he was sprayed with tear gas, punched and forcibly retained in the hospital in the same building as the police headquarters. He was not held incommunicado, continuing to govern from the hospital, and some nurses and doctors claim that he was not kidnapped at all and that he did not want to leave – which would make sense, since the angry policemen who had 63

already assaulted him were guarding the building. ‘What happened today was a failed coup d’état,’ Correa said during a telephone interview while at the hospital (Correa 2010a: 54). And he again dared the police, vowing that he would leave the hospital either ‘as president or as a corpse’ (Coba 2010). Then, at about 9 p.m., as if on a TV reality show, Ecuadoreans watched policemen and soldiers shooting at each other inside a hospital, as the military launched a rescue mission for the president. In contrast to Ecuador’s coups of the past, in which few if any died, this was the bloodiest episode in the country’s recent history: nine people died and 275 were wounded, including Correa and Minister of Foreign Relations Ricardo Patiño. Correa was immediately returned to the presidential palace, where he gave a fiery speech from the balcony to thousands of rallying supporters below. ‘Kidnapped for a whole day, with twenty-two stitches in my swollen knee, bombarded by tear gas, I never surrendered, and I leave here with the pride of being the president of this immense and marvellous republic,’ he declared. ‘Long live Ecuador!’ (Correa 2010a: 68). Correa’s government reacted by bringing charges against the police involved. The police force is undergoing a process of restructuring, and until the changes take place the military is in control of national security. In addition, the government has used the media to present the case that the police strike was the result of a conspiracy to overthrow Correa. According to his administration, the conspiracy included former president Lucio Gutiérrez and the Patriotic Society, his political party, whose membership includes many former military and police officers; other right-wing parties; social movement organizations, including the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE); ultraleftist parties, such as the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party of Ecuador and its electoral front, the Democratic Popular Movement; sectors of the indigenous party Pachakutik; the US right; petty bourgeois intellectuals; and the privately owned media (Ministerio de Coordinación de la Política 2010; Ministerio del Poder Popular 2010; Paz y Miño Cepeda 2010). These sinister forces, according to the Correa government, manipulated the police, whom the president has described as ‘a horde of savages who wanted to kill me’. He has furthermore portrayed them as ignorant, saying they did not read or understand the content of the law against which they were protesting (Correa 2010a: 63–4). As for the leaders of social movements who supported the policemen’s demands but opposed the coup, such as CONAIE, Correa said: ‘Their attitudes and voices are incomprehensible, against nature’ (ibid.: 13). The official narrative is partially correct. Correa is right in claiming 64

The legacies of corporatism and Correa’s project of state formation

The striking police argued that the draft Public Service Organic Law would cut important benefits, including Christmas bonuses, meritbased wage increases in the form of medals, and automatic promotions based on years of service. ‘Medals have a symbolic and an economic 65

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that there was a coup attempt, in the sense of detaining the president and perhaps a belief that these actions would inspire others to rebel. Yet it was not an ordinary coup, since the military remained loyal to the democratically elected government; the only military support the policemen received came from elements of the air force who briefly shut down Quito airport. The police abused their prerogatives, did not follow lines of command, and kidnapped the president, thereby conspiring against electoral democracy. They forgot that they are not just any ordinary group – they are armed and in charge of security. The main problem with this narrative of a coup is that the government’s list of coup plotters keeps growing, lumping the local and US right wing together with left-wing parties and social movement organizations. The account of a conspiracy of evil forces against a revolutionary government transforms Correa’s democratic adversaries – including the leadership of social movement organizations – into irrecon­cilable enemies of the administration, the people and the ­nation. Indeed, the official account of the events of 30 September 2010 is a Manichaean narrative in which the right and its allies plot behind the scenes against an altruistic, revolutionary president. It is a description that threatens to transform all of the Correa government’s rivals into coup plotters. The Venezuela-based blogger Eva Golinger, for instance, used the Correa government’s story to condemn CONAIE as a tool of Yankee imperialism without delving into the reasons that CONAIE and other social movements are in conflict with Correa (Golinger 2010). If we want to move beyond conspiracy theory and Manichaean thinking, we need to understand the police rebellion not just from the point of view of the government but also from that of those who were protesting. Why did the police choose to protest as other groups normally do – by burning tyres and disrupting traffic? Were they an irrational mob? Or, as the government argues, did sinister conspirators manipulate them? As we will see, a crucial element in the police officers’ rebellion was the legacy of corporatism in the relationships between state and civil society in Ecuador, and the Correa government’s attempts to do away with corporatist privileges.

value,’ explained one lieutenant interviewed by FLACSO researcher Diana Jaramillo in the aftermath of the unrest. The lieutenant, who asked to remain anonymous, described the medals and bonuses as an economic incentive and recognition for a job well done, arguing that the government did not explain how overtime pay would compensate for their elimination.2 ‘Because of the complexity of our work,’ he explained, ‘it is almost impossible to account for extra time. We do not punch cards, and we are moved to different parts of the country for up to three weeks.’ Journalists from the Quito-based newspaper El Comercio interviewed policemen and reported that rank-and-file policemen resented salary discrepancies between themselves and their superior officers. Whereas sub lieutenants make $1,286 a month, rank-and-file officers earn $819, which some argued is insufficient for those transferred to provinces, since they have to pay for rent twice. The government countered that it had raised police salaries and that this increase amply compensated for the reduction in bonuses and Christmas presents such as toys, sweets, imported food treats and liquor. Correa claims that the public service law will rationalize and unify salary discrepancies and abuses. But the police said it was still not enough to buy uniforms and boots, which they used to get for free. They furthermore complained of being unjustly singled out for human rights allegations and criticized the revolving-door legal system, which they said quickly released criminals they worked hard to detain (El Comercio 2010). But beyond this wrangling over the fairness of the law lies a larger conflict: the Correa government’s attempt to do away with long-­ standing ‘corporatist’ privileges in Ecuador. Correa, elected in 2006 and re-elected in 2009 on an anti-neoliberal platform, is the self-proclaimed leader of a ‘citizens’ revolution’ against the partidocracia (partyarchy), made up of various traditional political parties, which developed after Ecuador’s transition to democracy in the late 1970s. After what Correa has called ‘the long and sad neoliberal night’, the Ecuadorean state was fragile and weak, fractured by deep rivalries between regionally based elites. It had abandoned many of its citizens and national ­values as elites embraced the dollarization of the economy. Thousands res­ ponded by migrating overseas. In response, Correa’s government has embarked on a project of state formation – bringing back the state through central planning, an expansion of the bureaucracy and the regulation and control of economic, cultural and social activities. All these policies are being carried out in the context of an oil boom the likes of which has not been seen in Ecuador since the early 1970s. 66

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Correa’s post-neoliberal administration increased spending in social programmes from 5 per cent of GDP in 2006 to 8 per cent in 2009. The minimum wage was raised from $170 to $240 a month, and the new Constitution got rid of subcontracted labour. The government continues to subsidize natural gas for domestic consumption, gas­ oline and electricity for the poor. The results of this increase in social spending under Correa, so far, are not impressive. Poverty declined before Correa took power from 49 per cent in 2003 to 37 per cent in 2006, and to 36 per cent in 2009. The global crises obviously had a negative effect on poverty reduction. The Gini coefficient was .525 in 2006 and .499 in 2009. Poverty was reduced in urban but not rural areas. Extreme poverty actually increased for indigenous people, from 37 per cent in 2006 to 46 per cent in 2009 (Ponce and Acosta 2010). As part of the return of the state, the government aims to regulate associations and groups of civil society labelled by Correa as ‘corporatists’ – teachers, students, public employees, labour unions, women and indigenous peoples. Corporatism is best analysed as a series of structures that organize the relationships between civil society and the state (Malloy 1977; Stepan 1978). Under corporatism ‘the state often charters or even creates interest groups, attempts to regulate their number, and gives them the appearance of a quasi-representational monopoly along with special prerogatives’ (Stepan 1978: 46). The state gives incentives to groups to get organized. It also recognizes their representatives as authorized to negotiate jobs, and resources. Corporatist inclusion promotes the social mobility of leaders when they become state employees or consultants. Corporatism is a strategy that aims to regulate contention. Some forms of protest are rewarded with a favourable state response. Other forms of dissent do not have realistic opportunities to be successful, and can be repressed. In the 1930s the state organized entrepreneurs into the Chambers of Commerce, Agriculture and Industry (Conaghan 1988: 85). Different subaltern groups, such as state employees and industrial workers, were also incorporated into the state as special groups with particular privileges and prerogatives. After the last return to democracy, during the government of Jaime Roldós and Osvaldo Hurtado (1979–84), the corporatist pact was broadened to incorporate previously excluded groups such as urban dwellers, peasants, women and indigenous ­people (León 1994). Through the National Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities (CONAIE), the indigenous movement become corporatist and included in the state (ibid.). In the government of Osvaldo Hurtado (1981–84) indigenous organizations demanded a programme

of literacy in Kichwa and other indigenous languages. From the early 1990s to 2009 CONAIE directly administered bilingual education in a context of neoliberal fiscal austerity (Martínez and De la Torre 2010). Under corporatism, political parties represent the interests of particular groups, and they put the interests of their group ahead of the national interest (Quintero and Erika 2010: 76). Correa’s government considers itself as representing the interests of society as a whole, and of the nation, and not of particular groups. Its aim is to get rid of special-interest representation in the state apparatus. In contrast to neoliberal experts who came from multilateral organizations and from the private sector, a post-neoliberal intelligentsia made up of social scientists that used to work for NGOs and academia is in charge of the National Secretariat of Planning and Development (SENPLADES). This is the most important state institution and has the task of drafting and implementing the national development plan. Like other technocrats, Correa’s post-neoliberal experts consider themselves as representing the interests of all society and not of particular interests (Centano 1993). Technocrats share high modernist ideologies: ‘a particularly sweeping vision of how the benefits of technical and scientific progress might be applied – usually through the state – in every field of human existence’ (Scott 1998: 96). The objective of SENPLADES is the construction of the sumak kawsay, a term coming from the cosmology of indigenous peoples, whose overreaching goal is to attain ‘a total harmony between the community and the cosmos’ (SENPLADES 2009a: 56). Their aim is to modernize Ecuador so that in 2030 it will be ‘a society of bio-knowledge and a provider of eco-tourist communitarian services’ (ibid.: 56). In order to achieve these high modernizing objectives their first steps are policies of import substitution industrialization, and the rationalization and modernization of the state in order to eliminate administrative irrationalities and corporatist privileges (ibid.: 41). As a consequence Correa’s government has had conflict with all organized groups of civil society that in the past negotiated for special privileges with the state: teachers, students, public employees and indigenous organizations. The government considers that none of these groups represents civil society, and that they are not real social movements. On the contrary, they are depicted as corporatist associations and specialprivilege groups that hinder their universalistic project to strengthen the state and to rationalize the bureaucracy. The Correa administration’s attempt to do away with corporatist privileges has provoked resistance and, as we saw with the police, 68

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anger among people who feel that the government is taking away benefits. The administration has done a poor job explaining its policies and taking into account the suggestions of organized groups. Policy changes appear to be the result of technocratic impositions. Therefore, Ecuador’s myriad corporatist groups have piled on their grievances, which came to the fore during the police strike. Many who resented the government’s infringement on their rights took the opportunity to protest. This explains why a few teachers and students organized by the PCMLE joined the police in different ­cities. In the central highland city of Latacunga, for example, teachers, college students and others took over the governor’s office. It also helps to explain the position of the indigenous organizations that have remained critical of the Correa government. In contrast to the president’s conflict with the police and the right-wing opposition, his problems with CONAIE are primarily rooted in strong disagreements over mineral extraction. Correa sees in mining the country’s future and proposes to use natural resources to alleviate poverty (Dosh and Kligerman 2009). ‘We cannot be beggars sitting in a sack of gold,’ he has said. Sectors of Alianza País, the indigenous movement, and ecologists argue that the new Constitution’s overarching goal of sumac kawsay – meaning ‘the good life’ or ‘living well’ in Kichwa – justifies their opposition to mineral extraction and their push to establish alternative relationships between humans, nature and development. Another conflict with indigenous movements is over the question of autonomy. Beginning in the late 1980s, in a context of neoliberal cuts in social spending, CONAIE and other indigenous federations were put in charge of bilingual education. Seeing this as a malignant legacy of neoliberalism, Correa’s government has transferred bilingual education from indigenous organizations to the Ministry of Education. Indigenous teachers have opposed this transfer, which they argue is an attack on their autonomy. Correa is attempting to bring order and to rationalize the legacies of years of corporatist bargaining. Instead of allowing particularistic groups to negotiate their interests, he is proposing more universal criteria for determining such things as benefits and privileges. However, his technocratic style of governing, bypassing dialogue and input from civil society, led to the perception that the government was unjustly taking away hard-won prerogatives and benefits. Like other groups resisting modernization efforts, the police clung to their perceived rights and demanded the restitution of their privileges.

Between a citizens revolution and the co-optation of social movements

After four years in power Rafael Correa’s government has not yet created institutions for popular participation similar to the Bolivarian Circles or the Community Councils in Venezuela. This is strange indeed because participatory democracy was one of the mottos of the movement that brought him to power in 2006. Ecuadoreans have been demanding participatory democracy, and invented short-term institutions of radical assembly democracy such as the ‘people’s assemblies’, created after the overthrow of President Abdalá Bucaram in 1997, the ‘people’s parliament’ that was formed around the time of the uprising that ended with Jamil Mahuad’s presidency in 2000, and ‘neighbourhood assemblies’, established after President Lucio Gutiérrez was removed from power in 2005. The height of citizens’ participation in Correa’s administration took place during the drafting of the Constitution of 2008, when the National Assembly opened its doors to citizens’ organizations to present their demands and pro­ posals on how to create a new inclusive and democratic Constitution. Rafael Correa’s platform in the 2006 elections was for the creation of ‘an active, radical, and deliberative democracy’. It aimed to establish a ‘participatory model that will allow citizens to exercise power, take part in public decisions, and control the actions of their representatives’ (Alianza País 2007: 19). The new Constitution was going to be drafted with the participation of all mobilized citizens so all could appropriate it as their own. These democratizing proposals went hand in hand with an antiinstitutional stand. Correa ran as an outsider without presenting candidates for the Congress, promising to close it and replace it with a constituent assembly (Conaghan 2008a). After winning the election, Correa’s government jettisoned fifty-seven opposition members of Congress. Later, the National Assembly assumed all legislative powers after declaring that Congress was in ‘recess’. Because Correa ran as an anti-party outsider, he did not build a political party but rather a movement. Alianza País (AP) combined a self-conception as a citizens’ movement (with Correa as just another citizen) with a charismatic construction of Correa as the embodiment of the citizens’ revolution. The tensions between citizens’ autonomy and top-down populist mobilization were evident in the constituent process. In contrast to previous processes perceived as closed, the drafting and the discussion of the new Constitution were transparent and open. When Alberto Acosta, one of the founding members of AP, was president of the 70

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Assembly, the goal was to engage in pluralist deliberations. It was an experiment in deliberative democracy that finally could not be fully realized under Correa’s charismatic leadership. Correa became impatient with debates in the Assembly that might have cost votes in the approving referendum. He disapproved of Indianist proposals to make Kichwa an official language, ecological protectionist plans to forbid open mining operations, and feminist discussions about abortion and gay rights. He accused his own Assembly people of delusion through ‘left wing-infantilism’. He also worried that the Assembly would not have a Constitution ready by a previously promised date. Correa viewed the delays explained by Acosta as necessary for the job of drafting a new Constitution as signs of an overly democratic, naive and inefficient leadership in the Assembly. In the end, Correa asked the political bureau of his party to request Acosta’s resignation from the presidency of the Assembly. After naming a new president more in tune with Correa’s wishes, the Assembly expedited its job and fulfilled its timetable. The new Constitution was approved in a referendum with 64 per cent of the vote, but at the cost of limiting deliberation on its content and of not following its own internal institutional procedures. Correa understands democracy in substantive terms as social justice. He follows the old-left distinction between bourgeois and real democracy. In a conference at Oxford he differentiated formal democracy understood as the right to vote from real democracy, based on ‘equity, justice, and dignity’, and the ‘rights for education, health, and housing’ (Correa 2009d). Correa’s social programmes, such as the human dignity bonus that gives $35 a month to the very poor, housing projects, the distribution of food, and a bonus to protect the high-altitude páramo, are well received by indigenous people, and the poor. An indigenous woman from Tixan in the province of Chimborazo said: ‘Today I am grateful to God and to President Correa. I have the bono and buy food, pay for electricity, and can buy a little something for my kids’ (Tuaza 2010). Another woman corroborated, ‘Thanks to the President I get $35.’ In order to benefit from these programmes, individuals in rural areas have to belong to a community organization and, because the main autonomous indigenous organization, the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), is in conflict with the government, parallel organizations have been created (Becker 2011; Martínez Novo 2010; Ospina 2009; Dosh and Kligerman 2009; Tuaza 2010). For instance, the government created from the top down the Union of Popular Organizations of Ecuador in the province of Chimborazo. It has also reactivated the Federation of Ecuadorean Indians

(FEI) from the top down. The FEI, funded by the Communist Party, was very active from the 1940s to the 1980s during the struggles for agrarian reform. Its membership and importance shrank with the strengthening of CONAIE. Social distribution under Correa then also becomes a tool to bypass autonomous indigenous organizations, and beneficiaries feel obliged to the president. As one respondent said: ‘The government takes care of us, we have to be grateful’ (Tuaza 2010). In December 2009 many communities did not join CONAIE’s protest because they were afraid of exclusion from the government’s housing programme. This is why in Chimborazo province, and in contrast to common indigenous people who see Correa as a ‘redemptive messiah’, the leadership of CONAIE argue that he ‘deceives the poor, giving handouts in order to weaken indigenous organisations, to stop their mobilisations, and to divide the communities’ (ibid.: 22). Correa might be governing for the people but without their autonom­ ous inputs and participation. His regime did not have the desire to organize supporters beyond clientelist networks during election time. As conflicts with organized groups increased leading up to the police uprising in September 2010, the government increased its efforts to organize supporters. As Roberts (2006) has argued, perceived or real conflict over elite privileges encourages populists to build long-lasting organizations. Correa’s regime has moved from delegitimizing the leadership of social movements to directly creating organizations to mobilize supporters from the top down. Correa’s populist leadership

Perhaps the most significant effect of what the government labelled ‘the coup attempt’ has been the consolidation of Correa’s image as the Ecuadorean nation’s redeemer. The images of him walking with a cane through the violent ‘mob’ of striking police officers, his face deformed by tear gas, evoked the suffering Christ. After his spectacular rescue and his appearance on the balcony of the presidential palace before his cheering supporters, Correa seemed to have transformed into the extraordinary president, the embodiment of democracy and of the revolutionary process, who risked his own life and was attacked by a mob. His leadership acquired true charismatic proportions. His popularity rose to 75 per cent (Ministerio de Coordinación de la Política 2010: 17). Correa has gradually become a master of using a Manichaean populist rhetoric that divides society into two antagonistic camps: the people versus the oligarchy. He has followed the CFP (Concentración 72

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de Fuerzas Populares) characterization of the oligarchy as pelucones (wigs). ‘We have to defeat the oligarchy, the partyarchy, and the wigs who want to go back to the past’ (Correa 2009d). Politicians, journalists and anybody who opposes or challenges him have been labelled pelucones. Social movement organizations have also been the target of his belligerent rhetoric. He called ecologists ‘aniñaditos’ (well-to-do infantile and not fully masculine pampered kids) ‘with full bellies who oppose everything all the time’. He contended that ‘infantile radical’ ecologists are ‘the main danger to our project’. A few months later he corroborated: ‘We always said that the main danger to our political project, after defeating the right in elections, are the infantile left, ecologists, and Indianists’ (Correa 2009b). In October 2009, in the midst of a conflict over the use of water, he called the leadership of the indigenous organization CONAIE ‘golden ponchos’ and ‘Indian wigs’ out of touch with their social base. The term ‘citizens’ revolution’ allows Correa to legitimize his regime with notions of the need for a total rupture with the existing order to bring meaningful and long-lasting change. In front of an audience of policemen he said: ‘Nobody takes a step backwards. This revolution will not be sold or will surrender’ (Correa 2009c). The notion of a total rupture with the immediate past helps to paint the series of elections held under his regime as Manichaean struggles between historical projects (Conaghan and De la Torre 2008). Because the goal is to construct an entirely new regime, the tools used to implement change are not necessarily required to respect procedures or the rule of law. Living under a revolution justified the Correa administration’s illegal closure of Congress, the war against the privately owned media, the defamation of former left-wing allies, and the attacks on ‘corporatist’ social movement organizations. Correa does not just present himself as different from regular politicians; his mission is to lead the homeland to its second and definitive liberation. Like the founding fathers, he once claimed, ‘We are ready to risk our lives to bring change’ (Correa 2009e). Echoing the Gospels, he asserted: ‘Be sure that I do not treasure power but rather service to my people, especially the poor’ (Correa 2009f). He portrays his ­struggle on behalf of the poor and the nation as heroic: ‘We defeated the representatives of the most reactionary sectors of the oligarchy, corrupt bankers, and the media that defend the past’ (Correa 2009d). As these quotes illustrate, Correa unequivocally portrays himself as a necessary ‘good leader’ needed in a country that, according to him, lacks social capital, understood as strong social networks and ­organizations.

­ orrea explained in the last sentence of his book Ecuador: From Banana C Re­public to No Republic (2009a: 195): ‘When social, institutional, and cultural capital is absent, good ­leaders are fundamental. Their influence will diminish if they help to consolidate these kinds of [social] capital. Unfortunately, during the crises Latin Americans have endured during the long and sad night of neoliberalism, probably the strongest was the absence of good leaders.’ Although most social scientists would agree that formal institutions in Ecuador were in crisis, few would agree with Correa’s portrayal of the country as having been in a crisis of social capital. After all, Ecuador was the home of the strongest indigenous movement in the Americas. CONAIE was at the forefront of the resistance to neoliberal policies and participated in the popular overthrow of two presidents: Abdalá Bucaram in 1997, and Jamil Mahuad in 2000 (Becker 2011). International organizations like the World Bank embarked on the strengthening of social capital with their programmes of ethno-development in Ecuador. Nonetheless, Correa sees his role as that of the good leader needed in a vacuum of social organizations because he dismisses previous organizational experiences as corporatist and particularistic. In a country where coups have been common in recent history – Presidents Abdalá Bucaram (1996–97), Jamil Mahuad (1998–2000) and Lucio Gutiérrez (2003–05) were all deposed by what most citizens considered popular rebellions – all actors on 30 September 2010 tried to re-enact scripts they know too well. Members of both the right and left-wing opposition called for the president’s resignation, and a few took to the streets to push for his dismissal. For his part, Correa responded to the crisis by promising that his government will ‘radicalize the citizens’ revolution’. The term ‘citizens’ revolution’ has many meanings. During his first presidential campaign it was understood as a platform against neoliberalism and for the establishment of par­ticipatory democracy. But since the government has not created participatory institutions this ­notion is mostly used to signify post-neoliberal pol­icies based on a strong interventionist state, as well as on policies for social distribution that can be implemented with the petrodollars of the oil boom. One might think that in order to push the revolution to the left, the government might enter into dialogues with social movement organizations that felt ostracized. Unfortunately, the path of the administration has been to bypass social movement organizations and to create loyal organizations like the Union of Popular Organizations of Ecuador in the province of Chimborazo and to reactivate the Federation of Ecuadorean Indians (FEI) from the top down. 74

Conclusions

­Like other left-wing governments reviewed by Kirby and Cannon in the introduction, Correa came to power thanks to the support of social movements that wanted to get rid of neoliberal policies. In order to 75

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Ecuadoreans have been incorporated into the political system in a populist framework in which democracy is lived and understood as the occupation of public spaces in the name of a leader (De la Torre 2010). While this tradition is democratizing insofar as it includes people who were previously excluded, it is based on a leader’s authoritarian appropriation of the will of the people. Correa follows this populist tradition. His populist discourse has democratizing traits insofar as it politicizes relations of class inequality, yet is authoritarian because it transforms rivals into conspiratorial enemies. The tensions  between populism and democracy are also evident in the relationship between  Correa and social movement organizations. On the one hand populist discourse on behalf of the people and against the oligarchy could open opportunities for common people to articulate their own demands. But because the leader feels and acts as the embodiment of the will of the people, there is little tolerance for autonomy, and populists tend to bypass or to co-opt existing social movement organizations (Oxhorn 1998). As Luis Macas, one of the historical leaders of CONAIE, said, their ‘objective is to liquidate the indigenous movement in this country, to dismantle and destroy this movement’. He characterizes the Correa administration as neither socialist nor even left-wing. ‘This is a populist government,’ he said, ‘whose objective is to challenge the neoliberal model on a few points, through a series of modest reforms, so that the model as a whole can continue advancing’ (Webber 2010). Correa’s highly personalist government was strengthened after the coup. All state institutions will be tuned to serve the goals of the president. Because official fears of a right-wing conspiracy came to the fore, they will continue to see rivals and opponents – including the left and the leadership of social movements – as enemies not susceptible to the political process of bargain and compromise. The government will also continue to crack down on autonomous and critical social movement organizations, weakening in the process their goal of creating the conditions which a critical citizenry need for the functioning of a strong and deliberative public sphere to flourish. Correa’s citizens’ revolution might continue to establish social policies for the people but without their active participation and their critical inputs and deliberation.

promote social justice they advocated an increasing role for the state in the economy and society. Using the extraordinary resources available owing to the record prices of mineral resources, Correa’s government is fulfilling his promise of strengthening the state and increasing social spending. In this sense his administration is reverting to some neoliberal policies. Yet as Kirby and Cannon argue, the oil export boom is at the same time maintaining and enhancing the extractive productive base of the economy. The government’s policies favourable to open mining, and the opening of new oilfields, are leading to conflicts with ecologists, peasants and the indigenous movement. The government has even gone so far as to refer to activists as terrorists. Correa’s government, like that of some other left leaders analysed in this volume, promised a project of radical democratization based on an active citizenry. But, unlike in Chávez’s Venezuela, in Ecuador no institutions promoting participatory democracy have been created. Correa’s government has followed a technocratic approach to governance. Claiming to represent the interests of all society and to have a blueprint that will free the state from irrationalities and special privileges, technocrats argue that civil society and social movements are corporatist and do not defend general but rather particular interests. Technocrats downplay all previous organizing efforts as particularistic and hence as impediments to the construction of a new society free from the interference of special interests. They also use the state to reduce the power and influence of social movements while promoting the figure of the president as the benevolent father committed to social justice. Nor surprisingly, organized sectors of society have resisted what they perceive as a technocratic approach to governance that in the name of the general interest is reducing and taking away hard-won conquests. Because of its technocratic and undemocratic approach to governing for the people but without accepting their input, Correa’s government is hindering the development of civil society and of strong public spheres. Instead of allowing for the creation of ‘a strong associ­ational dynamic and a commitment to inclusive, critical debate’, Correa’s government is closing spaces for dialogue. It is perplexing that a self-described left-wing government is in conflict with the social movements that should be its social base. The police rebellion showed the limits of a statist technocratic project that bypasses dialogue with organizations of civil society. As struggles with social movements esca­ late, instead of building institutional spaces for citizenship to thrive and promoting dialogue, the Correa administration is becoming more authoritarian. 76

1  A previous version of this chapter was published as ‘Corporatism, charisma and chaos: Ecuador’s police rebellion in context’, NACLA Report on the Americas, 44(1), January/February 2011. I wish to thank the Centre for International Studies,

Grinnell College, where I was the John Heath visiting professor of ­social sciences, and the Guggenheim Foundation for the time and support to write this chapter. 2  Diana Jaramillo, interview with police officer, October 2010.

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Notes

6 | Re-evaluating participatory governance in Brazil B ernhard L eubolt, Wagner R om ã o , J oachim B ecker and A ndreas N ovy

This chapter deals with the globalization of a set of ideas on strengthening civil society, namely the Brazilian experiments with participatory budgeting (PB). This form of participatory governance has been widely seen as an innovative invention, resulting in more social justice (Boulding and Wampler 2010; Fung and Wright 2003). Despite the wide consensus in favour of participatory governance arrangements, critics point out the ‘Janus face’ (Swyngedouw 2005) of such innovations, which can easily be employed as instruments to control potential resistance to actually existing politics (Cooke and Kothari 2001). Yet even such critical accounts treat PB as an important exception to such negative tendencies (Hickey and Mohan 2004; Swyngedouw 2005). Since the mid-1990s, the experiences of PB – Porto Alegre in particular – have been celebrated in political and academic circles as one of the best ways to promote ‘empowered participatory democracy’ (Fung and Wright 2003), ‘redistributive democracy’ (Santos 2005) or ‘democratic innovation’ (Avritzer and Navarro 2003). PB, as practised in Porto Alegre, takes place in an annual cycle. Instruments of direct democracy are combined with committees of representatives elected from among the participants. Therefore, the participants not only make suggestions but are also responsible for the ranking of the proposed projects that takes place in assemblies both on a regional and on a thematic basis. During this process, participants in the direct democratic plenaries vote for representatives from among themselves who will participate in further negotiations with the municipal government. This group constitutes the PB Council.1 This includes an annual review which has led to the successive modification of the procedural rules for participatory budgeting. Some writers (especially Fung and Wright 2003) directly relate these institutional democratic inventions to progressive outcomes in terms of redistributive ­policies, whereas others come to more nuanced conclusions. Nevertheless, 78

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especially in the aftermath of World Social Forums in Porto Alegre, PB turned into a ‘blueprint model’ of an emancipatory and modern new left government. Therefore this chapter critically interrogates experiences of PB in Brazil and related ‘best practice’ prescriptions for governments. Most of the PB literature follows the international trend on concepts of ‘good governance’, focusing on ‘deliberative’ consensual arrangements (Avritzer 2005, 2006; Gret and Sintomer 2002; Navarro 2003; Wampler and Avritzer 2005). In these cases, civil society is idealized as being autonomous from the state and political parties, in line with the Habermasian conception of the public sphere (Habermas 1990). The notion of ‘deliberation’ is based on the rational exchange of thoughts in the setting of an ‘ideal speech situation’, so that the best argument would win out (Habermas 1992). The chapter first examines this reading of PB, based on the influential work of the Brazilian analyst Leonardo Avritzer. It criticizes the dominant approach of analysing PB in the context of the relationship between ‘civil society’ and the state. The chapter then provides an alternative approach drawing on critical state theory, influenced by Gramsci (1971) and Jessop (2007). In this view, the state and civil society are not viewed as autonomous spheres, but as deeply intertwined, echoing points made by Kirby and Cannon in the introductory chapter. Power relations in civil society influence the state and are in turn influenced by state power. In representative democracies, political parties are a major – but heavily underestimated – factor. Nevertheless, the state is not directly influenced by civil society, but is marked by ‘strategic selectivities’ (ibid.), favouring the actions of some groups in society more than others. The chapter therefore argues for studies relating to the political dimension of PB – that is, relating to disputes involving political parties (whether internal or external to them), especially parties in government. A ‘strategic-relational approach’ is used to better understand the role of the Brazilian Workers’ Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores, PT). Secondly, two case studies are examined to illustrate the argument: one from Porto Alegre, the capital city of Rio Grande do Sul and the most-cited example of PB, and the other from Osasco in the state of São Paulo. The systematization of the cases challenges the dominant ‘Habermasian’ approach. Highlighting the role of political parties, participants in PB experiences will be located on the ‘fringes’ of political society, with organic links to state actors and political movements with their respective hegemonic projects. Finally, we argue that the

entanglement of party strategies with participatory governance and attempts to democratize the state need to be taken into account in order to come to a better understanding of the emancipatory potential of such practices. Participatory budgeting, civil society and the state in Brazil

A key author, framing the debate on civil society and the democratization of the state both in Brazil and on the international level, is Leonardo Avritzer (Avritzer 2002, 2006, 2008; Avritzer and Navarro 2003), who draws on two main theoretical pillars: (1) he critically engages with the thesis of the ‘transition paradigm’ to democracy (O’Donnell et al. 1986), stating that democratization in Latin America should be analysed not only in terms of the good functioning of poli­tical institutions, as many transition theorists emphasize, but also in terms of how the political culture can be changed so that civil society is able directly to influence the state; (2) for this purpose, Avritzer follows ­Habermas’s ideas on the ‘public sphere’ (Habermas 1990), which lead him to ­propose the concept of ‘participatory publics’ formed by mechanisms of collective deliberation in the ‘public sphere’. Central to this is the free expression and association of participants in the public sphere, and an understanding of social movements and voluntary associations as proponents of practical alternatives of ­action in the public sphere. On these principles, Avritzer organizes his model of ‘institutional design’ in order to respond practically to the shortcomings of democratic theory. Its main empirical benchmark is PB, especially the experiences of Porto Alegre and Belo Horizonte, understood as a new institution acting as an ‘empirical link that makes possible the connection, beyond the theoretical division, between the institutional perspective and the theory of civil society’ (Avritzer and Wampler 2004: 219–20). The normative grounding in transition studies and Habermasian concepts of ‘deliberative’ justice and democracy leads to a rather one-sided positive reading of the influences of civil society, which is viewed as the autonomous representation of Habermas’s ‘life world’, having to counter ‘systemic’ influences by the state.2 This reading is related to the Brazilian Workers’ Party (PT) and its role in the creation and maintenance of the experiences of PB since, until the end of the 1990s, the overwhelming majority of experiences of PB occurred in municipalities governed by the PT (Ribeiro and Grazia 2003: 38). PT was seen as a party ‘different from others’ as it had the most coherent political programme and was mainly based on social movements, 80

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unions and civil society organizations of the ‘enlightened’ middle class, with strong influence in the universities. Therefore the idea emerged that only local governments with the moral standards and the political will to put the PB into operation could give normal citizens the power to directly decide upon the public budget. The electoral victories of the PT in the late 1980s (in Porto Alegre, São Paulo, Vitória and other state capitals in Brazil) came in opposition to the old members of the authoritarian regime and to the New Republic (Nova República). The main party of the old regime was the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (Partido do Movimento Democrático Brasileiro, PMDB), which had been the main force of the opposition to dictatorship, but was responsible on the national level for the failure to control inflation and to solve social crises throughout the country, but especially in the big capital cities. Popular participation – with the creation of communitarian councils and, especially in Porto Alegre, participatory budgeting – has become a brand identity of the PT. The vision of the PT as the ‘party of social movements’ was then transformed into the vision as a ‘party of popular participation’ which became the landmark of the ‘PT-way of governing’ (modo petista de governar; see Bittar 1992; Genro 1997; Magalhães et al. 2002). This was in line with the Habermasian view on participatory spaces having to respect the ‘autonomy’ of civil society vis-à-vis the state, with civil society acting as an element of external control of the political class. This view of the necessarily autonomous and predominantly good civil society, inherent in this vision of PB, is here challenged by a Gramscian-inspired strategic-relational approach. While Habermas’s rather liberal conception mainly focuses on consensus as the central mechanism for political action, Gramsci (1971) put more emphasis on the role of coercion and the intertwining of the state and civil society. Politics is seen as the constant struggle of different interest groups to assert their points of view and reach their own goals. Gramsci (ibid.: 129) gives special emphasis to the role of  political parties in building up institutions both within civil and in political society. For him, the anti-emancipatory bias of political society vis-à-vis a progressive civil society is not taken for granted, as both are subject to societal struggles. Gramscian-inspired theorists do recognize the often uneven power structures within states in capitalism, especially those which work in favour of capital and other powerful actors in society. To deal with the resulting uneven power relations, the concept of ‘selectivities’ has been introduced by Offe (1972) and further developed by Jessop (2007). Strategic selectivities

deal with the restraining and enabling impacts of state institutions on different actors in society. Applied to Brazil, this leads to a rereading of the conjuncture of democratization during the 1980s as being marked by a strongly republican-inspired movement (in the Rousseaunian radical republican tradition), uniting such different actors as middle-class sectors alienated by authoritarian rule, social movements with different social bases uniting around such issues as health, housing and living con­ ditions, and the trade union movement under the banner of ‘citizenship’, which has been recognized as only partially existing for large groups in society (Alvarez et al. 1998). The institutional impact of the democratization movement was seen in the strong influence by social movements on the drafting of a new Constitution in 1988. Their most important claims were social reforms to break with traditions of structural social inequalities and political reforms, striving for the decentralization of the authoritarian state, combined with democrat­ ization. In this context, the first experiences of PB flourished, among them PB in Porto Alegre. Porto Alegre and Osasco: two illustrative cases

These arguments can be demonstrated by examining two different cases of PB in Brazil. The most prominent case is Porto Alegre, the capital city of the southernmost state Rio Grande do Sul, as it was among the first cities to implement PB, introduced in 1989. The case is extensively analysed in the literature (for example, Abers 2000; Baierle 2005b, 2005a; Baiocchi 2005; Fedozzi 2000, 2001; Leubolt et al. 2008; Novy and Leubolt 2005; Santos 2005); we draw on these writings, while emphasizing certain aspects which have long been underestimated. Our second case is Osasco, a city in the state of São Paulo, where PB was introduced only in 2005 and on which there has been much more limited research. Therefore, the available empirical data on Osasco are used to complement the paradigmatic example of Porto Alegre. Research on Osasco focuses explicitly on the frequently neglected topic of the influence of political parties on PB. Both cities have had a government led by the PT during the implementation of PB. While Porto Alegre was governed by the PT between 1989 and 2004, opposition parties have been in power there since 2005, and this has strongly influenced strategic selectivities linked to PB. Osasco is still governed by a PT-led city administration. Recent research on this case confirms the hypothesis first elaborated in terms of Porto Alegre (Novy and Leubolt 2005), of the strong influence of political society on civil society 82

Rise and demise of PB in Porto Alegre3

Social movements were particularly strong in Porto Alegre during democratization (Baierle 1992). In the 1980s residents, mainly from poorer suburbs, protested against the government’s lack of interest in their plight. Their primary demands were the autonomous political participation of social movements, and investments in urban infrastructure and services. They linked their material demands to questions of rights (within the discursive frame of ‘citizenship’) and voiced a demand to democratize the budget (Fedozzi 2000). Initially, there were strong links between the social movements and the PDT (Partido Democrático Trabalhista), the historically strong centre-left party in Porto Alegre. But as the first elected PDT-city government (1985–88) did not achieve the promised results of better living conditions combined with a programme of democratization, the PT gained strength. Olívio Dutra, the PT’s first mayor in Porto Alegre (1989–92), sought to respond to these demands by implementing PB. It was the main state project of the first local PT government which aimed at empowering the popular classes. The second PT mayor, Tarso Genro (1993–96), who came from a different grouping within the PT, complemented the PB by more comprehensive elements (Becker 2003: 253) that were attractive to the middle class, such as strategic planning. The third and fourth local PT governments restricted themselves to minor amendments which were only radically changed after the electoral victory of the opposition from 2005 onwards. The strategic orientation in the early phase of the PT government was a compromise between proponents of a ‘workers’ government’ in ‘confrontation with the ruling class’ and proponents of a government ‘in the interest of the whole city’ (Utzig 1996). The first option was inspired by Lenin’s concept of ‘dual power’ by which the soviets were supposed to replace the bourgeois parliament. This would have resulted in giving power to the popular councils and including only the organized progressive sectors of civil society. The second option was inspired by different interpretations of Habermas’s concept of the ‘public sphere’, combined with republican notions of citizenship (for a review of these concepts, see Novy and Leubolt 2005) – a space open to all citizens which could provide a public sphere where media corporations and other powerful actors would have less power than is usually the case. Thus, the idealistic impetus of Habermas’s concept of the public sphere, as a prerequisite for an ‘ideal speech situation’, 83

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participation and the important role that party political strategies play in the implementation of PB experiences.

was not taken for granted, but rather viewed as a site of struggle by means of the political education of civil society in alternative spaces of political discourse (see Fischer and Moll 2000). The vision of PB as an alternative public sphere finally prevailed – against important radical fractions of the PT and social movements that wanted to confine participation to organized social movements. This is reflected in the unique institutional setting which combines direct and indirect democracy (for detailed descriptions, see Abers 2000; Santos 2005). Nevertheless, the notion of social and political transformation has been very important. Particularly during the first PT government, participation was designed to strengthen the popular classes. Perhaps the more important function of the newly established public sphere was to legitimize investments by the PT-led executive in relation to the local parliament, where the PT and its coalition partners never had a majority. In Brazil, the executive branch has the responsibility for drawing up budgetary proposals, whereas the legislature has the final power to accept or reject budgets, which Porto Alegre’s parliamentarians hardly ever exercised after the implementation of PB. This demonstrates the importance of the PB process as it enabled the PT to pass a progressive tax reform in the municipal parliament which in turn increased distributable public resources. Central, transparent and publicly discussed indicators for the allocation of the local state’s resources among the various city districts have been decisive instruments in ensuring distributive equality. The decisions made within the framework of PB soon showed positive material effects. Particularly between 1989 and 1996, the city’s basic infrastructure markedly improved (UNDP 2002: 81). In a comprehensive study on the redistributive effects of participatory budgeting, Marquetti (2003) shows that a greater amount of public resources per person has been invested in poorer areas. Social groups that were largely excluded from public life – particularly the poor and women – have gained from the introduction of PB. Empirical studies showed that these groups also represented the majority of participants in the process (Cidade 2003; Fedozzi et al. 2009). Thus, Baierle (2002a) identified the emergence of a ‘plebeian public sphere’ which differentiates PB in Porto Alegre from other schemes which have been dominated by local elites (Sintomer et al. 2008). It needs to be added that participation has been structured in two layers. First, claims were made within fora open to all participants, which then elected their representatives for the PB Council (PBC) (Conselho de Orçamento Participativo). Whereas both comprised relatively high shares of disadvantaged groups, party affiliation has been much stronger 84

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among the councillors of PBC, who actively work on the budget with public officials and as intermediaries between the local state and PB participants. The party affiliation of participants in the plenary meetings increased from 4.5 per cent to 7.7 per cent between 1995 and 2000. The presence of activists from residents’ associations was much stronger, though it declined from 50.5 per cent to 37.2 per cent between 1995 and 2002 (Baierle 2002a: 142). A strong group of participants in the plenary meetings – 38.9 per cent – declared a party preference for PT in 2000. However, 40.7 per cent of those who participated in this opinion poll did not show a preference for any of the parties. At the level of PBC, the party preferences were more clearly defined, with only 25 per cent of the conselheiros not professing any party preference (Baierle 2002b: 142). Between 1992 and 2004, the share of conselheiros who were at least close to the PT was always around 40 per cent (Filomena 2006: 170, Table 11). Thus, PT activists or activists who were very close to the party played a crucial role in decisive organs of the PB, while the correlation of forces of the PT’s internal currents in the PB differed to some extent from those of the local party leadership and the local parliament, as the centrist fraction was stronger in PB than the radical fractions (ibid.: 171–3). However, PBC was obviously not an exclusive terrain of PT activists. Baierle (2002a: 321) points out that ‘in light of the enormous popular and international success of the PB, all groups focused their attention on PB as a privileged space for recruiting new members’. For PB activists, active participation in PB emerged as a possible springboard to jobs as advisers or in projects. ‘This has brought about the emergence of the “professional citizen”, a kind of amateur politician acting individually but always available to represent the community or mediate relations between community and government’ (ibid.: 322). All PB participants have not only made suggestions for public investments but have also been responsible for the ranking of the proposed projects, differentiating PB from mere consultation programmes. The conselheiros have fulfilled the function of mediating between pressure from their constituencies to get their proposed investments passed and the budgetary logic imposed by city officials, stemming from limited financial means. Changes were made during the four successive PT governments, which aimed at the inclusion of broader constituencies. During the first PT government, the PB process was focused on the priorities in the various city districts. In 1994, the second PT government introduced additional ‘thematic fora’, for example on education, health and social services, transport and economic development covering the whole city. This was aimed at a stronger involvement by the middle classes and

by organized interest groups such as trade unions, and professional and business associations which had been at the margins of the PB thus far (Becker 2003: 253). In a similar vein, the second administration launched a reform of long-term urban planning, aiming at the increased competitiveness of the city and the links between public and private sectors. These changes in planning empowered sectors that were different from those strengthened by PB. Corporate sectors strongly linked to real estate played a major role in formulating the new ten-year planning ‘master plan’, Plano Diretor, while the role of the poor in this process was rather weak (Abers 2000: 150). With the support of opposition members of the local parliament, business achieved more flexibility in planning and a more intensive use of urban space than had originally been provided for. This was balanced by a more equitable and democratic use of land, as had been advocated by NGOs linked to the popular classes. Thus, the second PT government gave a slightly different emphasis to the change of strategic selectivity of the state. Though new initiatives of the subsequent PT government implied a shift of emphasis back to the popular classes, the Plano Diretor, which had already been initiated, was to have a long-term impact on the socio-economic spatiality of the state. The main aim of these reforms was the inclusion of a broader spectrum of society, moving farther in the direction of establishing an ‘alternative public sphere’, rather than a ‘workers’ government’. As in other South American cities with participatory initiatives, PB and other local policies in Porto Alegre had hardly any direct impact on the productive structure of the local economy. In addition, the local PT government could not do much to alleviate the financial crisis of 1998/99 (Becker 2003: 256; Leubolt 2006: 162–3). From 1999 to 2002, the PT instituted a PB at state level (and, thus, regionally) in Rio Grande do Sul (RS). This PB process affected the insertion of the regional economy into the wider national and global economy much more directly than local PBs and also proved to be much more controversial in the political landscape of the state (Leubolt 2006: 100, 137–43). Proponents of PB aimed at establishing a cross-class coalition. A survey conducted by Schneider and Baquero (2006) shows that the main motivation for the poor majority to participate was the possibility of gaining direct material benefits, whereas participating middle-class citizens were also strongly motivated by the ‘good governance’ dimensions of PB, such as reduced corruption or the positive international image of Porto Alegre. ‘Middle sectors were asked to contribute tax revenues in exchange for cleaner and more democratic government. 86

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20,000

Total

12,000 Regional

8,000

Temática

4,000 0 1990

1992

1994

1996

1998

2000 2002

2004 2006

2008

6.1  PB participants in Porto Alegre, 1990–2009 (source: Fedozzi et al. 2009: 8)

Poor citizens were asked to contribute political support in exchange for material benefits’ (ibid.: 22), leading to a ‘cross-class coalition’ of support. As indicated above, this coalition favoured the poor citizens within PB. Middle-class and corporate sectors tended more towards projects aiming at participatory long-term planning, which was difficult to integrate into PB, as the budgetary cycle restricted the horizon for participatory planning to one year. Further problems arose owing to financial restrictions, which were in part the result of austerity policies and the financial crises in 1998/99. These financial problems persisted throughout the beginning of the 2000s and led to declining numbers of participants of PB, as Figure 6.1 shows. The participatory process legitimized the city administration in the municipal parliament. Conflicts with municipal parliamentarians were rather mild in the beginning, as the main opposition party at the time (PDT) was also left of centre. PB proved to be important for the considerable electoral success of the PT in Porto Alegre, which governed the city for four consecutive terms (1989–2004). Perceiving the PB as the centrepiece of PT’s local state project, opposition parties began to adopt a more hostile stand over time. They did not permit any further progressive tax reforms, which would have enlarged the available resources, and PB was denounced as a marketing instrument of the PT. In 2004, nearly all opposition parties, which have opposed the PT’s PB for a long time, joined forces to elect José Fogaça as mayor. Since 2005, Porto Alegre has had a new city government. But it has maintained PB as an internationally accepted best practice model, 87

thereby acknowledging that it ‘does not belong to the PT’. Nevertheless, important transformations have taken place. The major new invention is called ‘Local Solidarity Governance’ (Governança Solidária Local – GSL). This programme is implemented parallel to PB and thus PB is no longer the central axis of urban government. Even the coordinating secretariats have been renamed and reframed. According to the PB-monitoring NGO Cidade (see ­Cidade 2006), the strategic shift towards GSL has been accompanied by a remarkable decline of attendance at PB plenaries by government officials, which means less technical assistance and less accountability to PB. A striving for consensus marks GSL, which is a reaction to criticisms about (1) the conflictive nature of PB, as participants struggle for investments in their immediate communities without considering the city as a whole, being linked to (2) its short-term planning horizon, and (3) the focus on demands for state investments without considering private–public partnerships (PPPs), especially as municipal finances are scarce (Porto Alegre 2006: 13ff). As a solution to these problems the government proposed new consensus-oriented interactions of state and civil society. This communitarian discourse focused on the ‘rights and obligations’ of citizens, pointing out that projects should also mobilize private capital instead of being merely public investments. The NGO Cidade (2006) reported that although PB remains, an increasing number of budgeted investments have not been constructed. The changes resulting from the transformations after the PT governor lost power point to the importance of political society and especi­ally party strategies in arrangements of participatory governance. PB also served as a vehicle for the political legitimization of policies proposed by the PT administration, which had to pass a municipal parliament where the PT-led coalition never had a majority. Therefore, PB was also used as an instrument of pressure against centre and right-wing parties, rather than striving for broader alliances, which could include centre-left to centre-right parties. The following case study of PB in Osasco highlights a further ­dimension of the links between civil and political society, represented by the councillors of PB acting on the ‘fringes of political society’. PT strategy and the operation of PB in Osasco4

Osasco, a city of about 700,000 inhabitants, is located to the west of the city of São Paulo, within its metropolitan area. The PT won the elections in the city after having polarized local disputes with the right for twelve years. The political affiliation of the mayor and much 88

Table 6.1  Council members interviewed and level of involvement in politics Level of involvement in politics

Number of council members

%

2 3 6 13 8 32

6.2 9.4 18.7 40.6 25.1 100

0/none 1/low 2/moderate 3/high 4/very high TOTAL 89

6 ·  Leubolt et al.

of the Osasco PT militants is linked to left-wing Catholic groups and trade unions of various industrial sectors. In 2004, Emídio de Souza won the elections to the municipal executive, leading the PT to power. The victorious coalition was formed by the PT, including parties from the right (PTB, PTN, PL), centre (PPS) and left (PCB, PCdoB and PT5). In 2008, Emídio was re-elected with an even broader coalition of thirteen parties.6 PB was introduced in the first year of the PT governing Osasco in 2005. Our analysis aimed to investigate the central forum of decisionmaking within the participatory process, the Participatory Budgeting Council (PBC). The PBC members (conselheiros) are elected in pairs for each region of PB (eighteen regions in 2009). Furthermore, five representatives of young people organized within PB and five representatives of the urban social movements and civil society organizations were elected. Altogether, there are forty-six conselheiros. The methodo­ logy combined a focus on the PBC and the preparation of a survey instrument that was not limited to the civil society dimension, but incorporated questions to account for the bonds with political society, focusing on four main points: (a) membership in political parties; (b) level of involvement in the immediately preceding electoral process; (c) participation in political meetings of politicians; and (d) the desire to run for City Council (the local parliament) or other public office. For analytical purposes, these four points (a, b, c, d) have become a political involvement index, as an essential element of the study (Romão 2010b). Of the forty-six conselheiros in the mandate of PB between 2007 and 2009, thirty-two were respondents, of which twenty-three were titular representatives and nine substitutes. Table 6.1 shows the results of applying the political involvement index to the PBC members (conselheiros) interviewed.

In summary, those with high or very high political involvement represent 65.7 per cent of the PBC members. They are fully engaged in typical processes of institutional politics, such as active participation in electoral campaigns, as holders of parliamentary seats, members of political parties or other forms of involvement in the city council. Most conselheiros, therefore, are deeply involved in political society. There is a high incidence of PBC members affiliated with political parties (twenty-three conselheiros or 71.9 per cent). If we consider that in addi­tion there are five conselheiros who declared themselves supporters, the number directly or indirectly involved with political parties is up to twenty-eight members, or 87.5 per cent of all interviewed persons. Of these, thirteen are members of the PT and four are supporters, altogether seventeen PBC members (53.1 per cent of respondents), which demonstrates, therefore, politically diverse participation, though strongly dominated by the PT. Table 6.2  Links of council members to political parties

PT

Affiliated 13 Sympathetic 4 TOTAL 17

PSB 3 – 3

PV DEM PDT PMDB PTB PTN PSC TOTAL 2 – 2

1 – 1

1 – 1

1 – 1

1 – 1

1 – 1

 - 1 1

23 5 28

Of the twenty-three party members, only one was the designated local leader of his party and six conselheiros were members of local directories. Council participants linked to parties other than the PT had a stronger internal voice within their political parties. For the members of PT, PB can be configured as one of the main spaces available for the start of a political career, or at least to position themselves better in their relations with the party and political society in general. For smaller parties in the city, PB seems to be an even more strategic space for their growth and to increase the visibility of their main leaders. Even within the parties with a tradition of a strong membership base, such as the PT, there is often a major dislocation between their base and the party leaders. Therefore, PB seems to represent the possibility of new linkages between party members (political society) and civil society in the context of local politics. It is worth noting that civil  society appears as relatively under-represented compared to political society, as only twelve conselheiros were part of civil society organizations (CSOs) and only four part of social movements. 90

Table 6.3  Level of participation in the electoral campaign of 2008 Participation in campaign No, but he/she voted He/she asked for votes the day of the election He/she actively participated in all the campaign He/she was ‘professionalized’ in the campaign He/she was coordinating campaign He/she was candidate TOTAL

Number of council members

%

5 1 13 6 4 3 32

15.6 3.1 40.6 18.7 12.5 9.4 100

If we also consider the remaining thirteen PBC members who stated that they had actively participated in the campaign on a voluntary basis, a total of 81.2 per cent of conselheiros directly participated in the election campaign. This strengthens the view of PB as a source of electoral support for socio-political leaders. The number of PBC members who reported having participated in more than ten political plenaries (twenty-one conselheiros or 65.6 per cent) is indicative, as these people are closely related to spaces usually reserved for more or less active supporters of parliamentarians. Only seven conselheiros (21.9 per cent) declared that they had never participated in a political plenary. These figures should be compared with those for respondents who reported wanting to be or having been candidates for the City Council. These are lower than for those who participated in the 2008 campaign or even those who are affiliated with political parties: eleven conselheiros (34.4 per cent of respondents) answered that they either have been or intend to be candidates and twenty-one (65.6 per cent) answered this question negatively. These numbers indicate that over a third of the sample want to start a political career, and also demonstrate that the desire to be a candidate does not seem to be the most important factor in terms of the relation of civil society to political society. 91

6 ·  Leubolt et al.

Regarding the second constitutive element of the political involvement index – participation in the 2008 election campaign – there is a high incidence of conselheiros who were involved in that election. Considering the PBC members who have been candidates for the City Council, those sectors coordinating the campaign and those who were ‘professionalized’ or paid (received pay or monthly allowance) to serve in the campaigns, a further thirteen PBC members (40.6 per cent), were identified as part of political society.

The elements identified here suggest that a significant majority of PBC members in Osasco have a strong relationship with political society. This suggests that members of political parties find in PB a propitious environment in which to advance their interests, and the expansion of socio-political support and training. PB provides its conselheiros with a close relationship with government officials, city councillors and local leaders of political parties. This is seen, in general, as an opportunity to advance a political career, or raise the political capital of the PBC members. PB produces an environment that captures affinities of interest among local political society – seeking to expand their ability to maintain themselves in power – and those that lie on its fringes, eager to make themselves available or, in a less elitist way, share their political projects. Conclusions

This evidence points to the need, when employing concepts such as ‘empowered participatory democracy’ or ‘strong publics’, to consider the interrelationship of political and civil society in order to come to a more realistic understanding of political processes. Instead of looking for a blueprint for enacting progressive politics in Latin America and even globally, we argue for considering the specifics of political society and party politics, which reflect both the interests of politicians and alliances forged between and within civil and political society. The PB did not create a new autonomous ‘public sphere’, but changed the strategic selectivity of the local state. The PB has had an impact on both the social and political correlation of forces at the local level. It tended to strengthen the influence of popular classes. Activists of local residents’ associations gained new channels of ­access to local political decision-making processes. However, the PB has been a unique opportunity for party activists to use a further political arena. Changes in the local institutions and the respective strategic selectivity of the local state have had significant consequences for policy-making. Further­ more, electoral changes at the municipal level, an often neglected component of success, have profoundly affected the PB in turn, as the example of Porto Alegre amply demonstrates. The consideration of the intertwined and contested nature of political and civil society would – in our opinion – be a first step to dealing with problems as encountered by the PT-led national government. A thorough analysis of the question of participation at national level would go well beyond the scope of this chapter. Both the political conjuncture – marked by a rather passive rejection of the preceding 92

Notes 1  In this chapter, PB Council members will be called conselheiros. This will help not to confuse PB Council members with the City Council members, called vereadores in Brazil. 2  In his latest book on the subject, Avritzer (2009) attempts to establish criteria for the inclusion of political society in his conceptual framework. However, in our view, Avritzer’s solution is insufficient because it is still linked to the rather narrow view of political parties as mere supporters (or not) of PB. For a thorough critical review, see Romão (2010a). 3  The analysis here draws on Leubolt et al. (2008); Novy and Leubolt (2005). 4  This case study is based on the doctoral thesis of Wagner de Melo Romão, Department of Sociology, Uni­versity of São Paulo (Romão 2010a).

5  PTB – Partido Trabalhista Brasileiro (Working People’s Party); PTN – Partido Trabalhista Nacional (National Working People’s Party); PCB – Partido Comunista Brasileiro (Brazilian Communist Party); PL – Partido Liberal (Liberal Party); PPS – Partido Popular Socialista (Socialist People’s Party); PCdoB – Partido Comunista do Brasil (Communist Party of Brazil). 6  The electoral and party system in Brazil is very permissive and it is common practice (especially in local governments) that the political right and left form alliances. The ­polarization between PT (Partido dos Trabal­hadores) and PSDB (­Partido da Social-Democracia Brasileira), at the national level, has led to disputes between coalitions headed by these parties on the local level.

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PSDB government’s economic and social policies as distinct from the highly mobilized and active civil society that existed at the end of the 1980s – and the government’s strategy have been different from the ‘PT way of governing’ proposed before. Therefore, democratization has not been a priority for the national government, as it has been at the municipal level, despite renewed emphasis on public consultation via national fora. Additionally, the approach taken in this chapter also serves as an antidote to approaches which tend to idealize participation as a means to promote social justice. A thorough analysis of the links between political and civil society which shows the decisive importance of concrete power relations in specific contexts is a useful starting point for this exercise.

7 | State–civil society relations during student mobilizations in Chile in 2006 and 20111 R en é J ara R eyes

The massive protests in Chile in 2011 surprised observers of the ­country’s recent history. Whether these were by indigenous, environmentalists or students – not to mention the miners’ protests, as des­ cribed by Nem Singh in this volume – various sectors of society have, through social mobilization and street protest, voiced their rejection of certain key projects of the centre-right administration of Sebastian Piñera (2010–14). Compared to the image of Chilean society in the 1990s as being apathetic and indifferent to public affairs, this new wave of protest marks a change in relations between citizens and the country’s institutions and in the conditions for dialogue between society and the state, which had been eroding as democratization advanced. In the 1980s, poorer sectors of Chilean civil society had strongly mobilized, but this reached a peak in 1984 amid severe economic crisis (Oxhorn 1995). As in other countries of the region, these mobilizations were part of the early process of transition from dictatorship to democracy, involving a certain liberalization and reconstitution of relations between the state and civil society. This change in state– civil society relations took place within the socio-political matrix of transition (Garretón et al. 2003; Mascareño 2009), which reached its peak in the 1990s. In the case of Chile, the Christian Democrat-led Concertación governments of Patricio Aylwin (1990–94) and Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle (1994–2000) saw their freedom to reform the ‘Chilean model’ as being restricted (Lahera and Toloza 1998; Drake and Jaksic 1999), so that they opted in practice for a gradual and consensual approach. Faced with this dilemma of whether to administer or to change the model, successive centre-left Concertación governments tried to balance neoliberal premises with policies of targeting spending towards the poorest sectors of society, such as the Chile Barrio Programme (Espinoza 2009: 285). As it was not possible to modify neoliberal policies which seemed to have become an integral part of the ‘Chilean 94

State–civil society relations in the context of democratization

Demobilization and authoritarian enclaves  Analysts generally agree that Chile’s return to democracy did not result in a strengthening of civil society activity (De la Maza 2004; Garretón 2009; Silva 2009). Considering the strong social mobilizations of the 1980s, it was expected that the coming to power, in the 1990s, of a broad coalition of centre and centre-left parties would lead to a greater opening to the new voices emerging from society. However, the opposite took place, and instead 95

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model’, the Chilean state established a double strategy during the 1990s: continuing the neoliberal socio-economic model but attempting the integration of social demands through the development of state programmes and agencies, targeting the most pressing social needs (Silva 2009: 262–3). Moreover, organizations such as trade unions and other social movements were co-opted by political parties, which, unlike in the 1980s, led to the demobilization of civil society and its increased dependence on the action of the state. The Concertación, in power from the return of democracy in 1990 until 2010, groups together a number of centre-left and centre parties.2 While the first two Concertación governments were led by prominent Christian Democrats, the accession to the presidency of two socialists, Ricardo Lagos (2000–06) and Michelle Bachelet (2006–10), marked a turn to the left at the heart of the governing coalition. This brought about more fluid relations between state and civil society, leading to the latter having a more active role in setting the public agenda. Yet while theoretically, as indicated in Kirby and Cannon’s introduction to this volume, this ‘turn to the left’ should have marked a structural change in state–civil society relations in Chile, this did not transpire. While each of the two socialist presidents sought to impose a social character on their respective governments, both continued to be limited by the legacy of the transition arrangements, which, it is argued here, began to weaken during the period of their presidencies. This chapter interrogates the complex relation between state and civil society in Chile, focusing on two specific moments of popular mobilization: the student protests of 2006 and 2011. As these mobil­ izations began primarily during Michelle Bachelet’s mandate and reached their peak during the first right-wing government in Chile since the return of democracy, it is argued that their examination is particularly useful owing to the important implications both have for the dissolution of the influence of the ‘matrix of the transition’ over Chilean politics.

a conservative strategy triumphed within the coalition, the ultimate aim of which was the demobilization and pacification of civil society. In reality, the Concertación governments exercised a powerful control over civil society organizations, without impeding their protest actions. The dependent relationship which civil society established with these governments in the 1990s caused it to lose the autonomy which it had gained during the mobilizations of the 1980s, when protest against the dictatorship was integrated with work in favour of different social groups such as women, trade unionists and students. However, the fact that such social activity had been ‘historically articulated in relation to the state’ (Garretón 2009) helped produce a ‘decline’ in social activity and as such constituted a democratic deficit in the Chilean transition (PNUD 2004). Within ‘transitology’ literature, the role of civil society is treated in detail (see O’Donnell et al. 1986), especially within the context of democratic consolidation (see, for example, Linz and Stepan 1996; Diamond 1994). In effect, the political world feared that the return to democracy could mean opening a ‘Pandora’s box’ of an infinite number of social demands accumulated during the dying years of the dictatorship (Joignant and Menéndez Carrión 1999). To control this possible source of conflict, the government of Patricio Aylwin constantly monitored social organizations for areas of possible conflict. As Joignant’s (2011) study shows, such work primarily took place among the ‘technopols’ of the Concertación,3 who remained in key positions of power throughout the latter’s twenty years in government. ‘Transitional’ democratization in Latin America had one more important element: unfailing respect for the norms imposed by the dictatorships on the new democracies, what Garretón (2003) termed ‘authoritarian enclaves’.4 These imposed a legal straitjacket on the new governments, preventing them from substantively changing the main elements of the authoritarian legacy. Figures such as ‘designated sen­ ators’,5 ‘binding laws’6 and the use of a binominal electoral system all influenced enormously the manner in which civil society organizations related to the state. The high quorums required to reform laws which protected the authoritarian legacy obliged the centre-left to adopt an agenda of gradual change in order to secure the support of the right in Congress, which in effect meant an indefinite postponement of the social agenda. These two elements of the transitional matrix – social demobil­ ization and the presence of authoritarian enclaves – determined the historical and institutional terms of dialogue between the state and 96

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civil society. Under this socio-political dynamic, social movements could seek a response to their demands only through institutional channels. Nevertheless, when such demands took a more radical turn and touched sensitive issues such as the education, health and pension systems, the Concertación repeatedly responded that it did not have sufficient support in its coalition to support reform. To the extent that the binominal system tended to favour the logic of political stalemate between the right, represented by the Union Democrática Independiente (UDI – Independent Democratic Union) and Renovación Nacional (RN – National Renovation), and the Concertación, any profound ­reform had to achieve agreement between both these forces. This excuse allowed any nuances and disagreements within the Concertación to be hidden, which, in addition to the institutional difficulties already outlined, amply demonstrates the difficulties of changing the neoliberal model inherited from the dictatorship. However, the change within the Concertación to governments led by the centre-left helped civil society regain a certain amount of autonomy. As the Lagos and, particularly, the Bachelet governments seemed to a lesser extent prisoners of the institutional limits of the transition, so social actors felt that they had greater autonomy to demand a deepening of reforms from these governments. With the removal of designated senators in 2005, and with a majority in Congress, the extreme prudence that had marked the Concertación seemed less justifiable with regard to such sensitive issues as education and health. In political terms, furthermore, this period was marked by the appearance of party disorder and indiscipline within the Concertación, giving credence to the growing impression that the logic of the tradi­tional party system was beginning to exhaust itself. While on the one hand the electoral system had achieved the establishment of two stable political blocs, on the other it had caused a virtual exclusion of dissident voices within each coalition. This allowed civil society movements to distance themselves further from the influence of the parties, making their demands much more radical than in the past. As Garretón (2009: 104) put it, the accession to power of Michelle Bachelet coincided with the absence of a political programme within the Concertación. From this perspective, the creation and the systematic use of Advisory Councils7 during her term in office responded more to her campaign promise, summed up in the slogan ‘more citizen participation’ (Gobierno de Chile 2007) than to a change in the appli­ cation of top-down policies characteristic of previous Concertación governments (Navia 2009: 315). Either way, it permitted Bachelet to

express her independence from the political parties by implementing socio-technical mechanisms aimed at including the voice of civil society actors in public policy discussions.

Insertion into the global economy  On an economic level, the transition was strengthened by maintaining the neoliberal economic model installed by the dictatorship after the financial crisis of 1982. The socalled ‘Chicago Boys’ (Valdés 1995; Huneeus 2000) introduced, under the form of a development strategy, a free market economic system which liberalized service sectors such as health, pensions, work and education in a first phase, later extending this liberalization to areas such as agriculture, justice and public administration. With the return to democracy, the fiscal surplus rule, limits on public spending and the management of macroeconomic equilibriums became articles of faith for finance ministers from Alejandro Foxley (1990–94) to Andrés Velasco (2006–10). At the same time, the commodity export model remained unchanged throughout those years; indeed, it was perfected thanks to the signing of free trade agreements with the United States and the European Union. During the 1990s, however, criticism was directed at the state, which, while bringing new benefits, did not in any substantial way change the existing development model. With growth levels averaging around 7 per cent of GDP per annum during the Aylwin presidency, there was little cause for criticism, but with the Asian financial crisis of 1997, a general sense of unease developed, which manifested itself electorally through increasing numbers of blank votes (Navia 2004: 94) and a sharp decline in the number of young people registering to vote (Toro 2007: 108), both of which caused concern among the political class. In this situation, a discourse of ‘growth with equity’ was promoted, revealing one of the major emerging social problems of the 1990s (Weyland 1997). The gap between the richest and poorest sectors in Chile had grown substantially over the years, reflecting one of the highest levels of inequality in the world.8 The socialist president Ricardo Lagos opted for a formula of economic growth, but with an added emphasis on distributive justice. While some important constitutional reforms affecting democratization were achieved during his mandate, it was only with the accession of Michelle Bachelet to the presidency that a genuine social agenda began to take centre stage in public debate, alongside an emerging discourse of civil society participation, and with a promise of the installation of a ‘citizen’s government’. The international economic context vindicated the Concertación’s 98

The ‘Penguin Revolution’ and the beginning of the end of an era

These conditions allowed for the emergence of a massive protest movement during Michelle Bachelet’s mandate. The main protagonists were secondary school students, who paralysed school activity between April and June 2006, holding huge marches through the centre of Santiago and attracting public approval (see CEP 2006). The ‘Penguin Revolution’ – so called because of the characteristic white and black uniform worn by secondary school students – surpassed a previous student protest in 2001 (dubbed ‘El Mochilazo’ after student school 99

7 ·  Jara Reyes

economic policy, especially during the Bachelet administration. Strict adherence to maintaining a fiscal surplus allowed successive governments to successfully ride out the economic crises of 1997 and 2008, bolstered by historically high copper prices on international markets. Owing to these favourable circumstances, the Bachelet government could develop an ambitious programme for government (Mardones 2007), including strong investment in pre-school education and the reform of the pension system. On the other hand, it was precisely these favourable economic indicators which led social actors to believe that their demands should finally be heeded by government. Furthermore, the manner of Chile’s insertion into the global economy demanded new commitments from the state. Chile’s admittance to the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) in 2010 required it to improve not only its performance in educational provision, but also its disastrous levels of income distribution. This ‘scandalous gap’ (‘brecha escandalosa’) in incomes, as the Archbishop of Santiago, Ricardo Ezzati, called it,9 constituted evidence of the failure of the Chilean model on income redistribution. This inequality resulted in differential access to a variety of services, with unequal access to education being seen as a key contributor to perpetuating differences between socio-economic groups. One of the factors that best represents this new spirit of reform was the creation of the Presidential Advisory Council for the Quality of Education (Consejo Asesor Presidencial para la Calidad de la Educación – CAP). With the legacy of the ‘instrumental’ use of civil society organizations by political actors (De la Maza 2004), this mechanism shows how a government of the moderate left tries to extend ‘civil society participation in the creation of public policies’ (Gobierno de Chile 2005), but at the same time clashes with the solid institutional frame of the Chilean state, which inhibits the entry of new actors to the political game.

bags – mochilas) as it went beyond demands relevant only to that group, calling instead for wide-ranging reforms of the entire Chilean educational system. This made the student movement appear more like a broader civil society movement than a group seeking to defend its own corporate interests. At the same time, the civil character of the ‘Pingüino’ movement was bolstered by the involvement of university student associations, such as the CONFECH (Chilean Students’ Confederation) and the Chilean teachers’ union, the Colegio de Profesores, as well as teachers’ professional associations, the student association of private third-level education, and parents’ associations, forming what came to be known as the Bloque Social por la Educación (‘The Social Bloc for Education’ or Social Bloc). The mobilization reached its peak with stoppages on 30 May and 6 June 2006, on a scale which had not been seen since the days of massive protests against the dictatorship in the 1980s (Domedel and Peña y Lillo 2008). As a result, the Coordinating Assembly of Secondary Students (Asamblea Coordinadora de Estudiantes Secundarios – ACES) shed the timid image of its predecessors, the Federation of Secondary School Students (Federación de Estudiantes Secundarios – FESES), for­ cing the government into negotiations. After some unfruitful mediation and mismanagement of the conflict by the Education Ministry, the government was forced to introduce a package of reforms and to set up what came to be called the Presidential Advisory Council (Consejo Asesor Presidencial – CAP), in which the social actors involved had a guaranteed representative quota. As a result of this commitment, on 9 June 2006 the ACES announced the end of mobilizations, the return of occupied schools to the authorities, and the beginning of negotiations.

Changing the LOCE: the structure of the educational system  The principal demand of the student movement was the modification of the Organic Constitutional Law on Education (Ley Orgánica Constitucional de Enseñanza – LOCE), a testament to the degree of sophistication that students had achieved in identifying the serious problems affecting the entire educational system. The constitutional status of the law ensured that changing it would not be easy, as this was one of the ‘binding laws’ (leyes de amarre), which needed a specific quorum in the Senate for its modification. Its inclusion in the list of demands reflected a long-held wish on the part of sectors of the student left and the Colegio de Profesores to see it removed, as it was viewed  by them as a fundamental pillar of the educational system installed by the dictatorship. 100

From protest to dialogue: lessons from the CAP for civil society

It was this very educational system which the eighty-one members of the Presidential Advisory Committee on the Quality of Education sat down to discuss on 14 June 2006. Brought together by a specific mandate of the president herself, this large group of actors provided generous representation for the most varied sectors involved in education: academics, universities, researchers in public policy and education, the private sector and the Church. Furthermore, the government set a ‘quota’ of eight students for the student movement, hence guaranteeing 101

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As part of his modernization plans for education, Pinochet had pushed through key changes to the system inherited from the previous democratic era. Principal among them was the establishment of a three-tiered system for educational provision: public, private and subsidized semi-private. In the last of these the state guaranteed a fixed subsidy which covered the greater part of educational costs, while the rest was covered by students’ parents. As part of the LOCE, moreover, the state transferred the administration of public and semi-private educational establishments to municipalities, leaving them to monitor and manage education. This meant transferring the majority of the costs to parents, in the knowledge that with extra economic contributions their children would get a better education in semi-private than in public schools. The logical consequence was the massive transfer of students to the private and semi-private systems. This left the poorest  students in the public sector and made Chile one of the top countries for educational segregation according to social class in the primary school sector (PISA 2009). In the university sector, neoliberal reforms from the Pinochet era also resulted in the establishment of numerous private institutions. While this allowed for a huge growth in third-level access, it was achieved by way of low-cost loans, which increased student and family debt, especi­ ally among the middle classes. This system underwent few changes during the 1980s and for much of the 1990s, despite a number of reforms implemented by Presidents Frei and Lagos. Indeed, both presidents paradoxically claimed the widening of access and increased numbers attending third-level education as achievements of their own. It was not until the turn of the century that voices were heard questioning the quality of education at all levels, and the spiral of inequality which the educational system itself was contributing to. It was claimed, indeed, that transferring market values to the education system, rather than making it a vehicle for social mobility, helped entrench class differences.

their presence alongside representatives from interest groups, political personnel linked to the government, a great number of university rectors and some members of Congress. Further members of the CAP were parents’ associations, educational corporations and other actors. In terms of organization, while the CAP was overseen by a man­ agerial team headed by the academic Juan Eduardo García Huidobro, in practice it depended on the ministries. Initially the team was organized into three commissions, on the regulatory framework, the institutional framework and educational quality, but these were later augmented by two further commissions on teachers and third-level education (Gobierno de Chile 2006: 12). An interim report was presented on 26  September and the final report on 12 December 2006. To examine the lessons of the CAP as a mechanism for citizen participation and to assess whether it was, in effect, merely a tactic on the part of the state to demobilize the students, it is useful to observe the types of challenges it presented to civil society participation.

Formal questions: criticisms of criteria and procedure  First, the CAP had a high level of dependence on the presidency for its operation, allowing the president policy flexibility but also exposing her to criticism for failures of the initiative. One problem is the difficulty of holding quality dialogue between such large numbers of participants. Dividing the CAP’s work into commissions with a managing group responsible for collecting decisions for publication in the respective reports had the advantage of laying out a clear and transparent procedure which to an extent allayed student mistrust. Nevertheless, it did not resolve the question of how to decide who would participate in which commissions. This question further opened a much more fundamental question on the actual role, aims and objectives of the CAP. For some it was a form of ‘hybrid forum’ (Callon et al. 2001), whereby answers to important policy questions were sought through citizen consultation. Others saw it as an expanded citizen assembly, with all actors involved in the conflict having representation. Finally, the CAP was seen as a type of ‘negotiating forum’ (mesa de diálogo) through which the government could gain time, restricting the range of action of civil society, and forcing the latter to compromise on its demands. These criticisms of procedure unmasked a high degree of ambiguity in the role and purpose of the CAP, which in fact was innate to its origins. The depth of the social conflict, the full presence of the parties in dispute and the need to construct technically viable proposals 102

Representativity confronted  A further key conflict emerged from the actual role of participants as representatives. The government constructed the CAP to allow participation for a wide variety of groups with influence over education policy at all three levels of provision: basic, secondary and higher. In effect this brought together three types of representatives who were not necessarily compatible: of the social, of the political and of knowledge. All three modes of educational provision were represented, public, private and semi-private, as well as organizations such as religious orders running educational establishments, and private universities. Their presence raised questions among students’ representatives about the transparency and accountability of, and possible conflicts of interests among, such representatives. Moreover, some political actors close to the government were included, without having a declared representative role for the state. This gave the government privileged access to the discussions and debates taking place, allowing it to pre-empt decisions by pre-preparing policy responses in the more sensitive areas. Further, technical experts such as public policy and educational analysts, and experts from think tanks linked to the right, were included. While these seemed to act as neutral, technical advisers facilitating mediation and negotiation, in effect they helped bolster the interests of government and the elites, further diluting the possible impact of students on the shape of final decisions. This complex form of representation encouraged the formation of alliances within the CAP around key issues, such as the Social Bloc (see above), which formed around the divisive issue of education for profit. Constituted by representatives of social actors, the public sector and university leaders, the Social Bloc defined distinctive positions in response to proposals made by the state on such controversial issues as the role of the state, of the private sector and of profit in educational provision, attracting much positive reaction from the public.

A deliberative deficit  Yet despite the formation of such alliances, consensus was difficult to achieve, as reflected in both the interim and final reports. These difficulties were most clearly manifested, however, 103

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closely determined the quality and substance of debate. In effect, the very rationality of the debate was strongly conditioned by these factors. At the same time, the ambiguity of the mechanism created different expectations among participants, a factor which helps explain to a great extent the frustration not only of the students but also of certain experts regarding the quality of the measures in the final reports.

when CAP deliberations had to be translated into policy. It is here that the limitations of the Chilean transition model, rather than those of the CAP, were clearly revealed. In particular the binominal system was shown to be a severe brake on change, especially in the case of the LOCE, which had been decreed by the dictatorship a few days before the return to democracy, and whose modification required a ‘qualified quorum’ (LOCE 1990). Nevertheless, the Bachelet government in particular had an absolute majority, suggesting that the problem lay not so much between left and right in Congress, as within the Concertación itself. Reform would have meant touching sensitive ­issues for some members of the governing coalition, such as religious education for the Christian Democrats. Consequently, the general propositions outlined by the CAP had to be amended in line with the requirements of the binominal system. Agreement had to be reached between the six parties in Congress, which eventually led to the introduction of a new General Law for Education (Ley General de Educación, 2009) replacing the old LOCE, as well as a Guarantee Law for Quality in Education (Ley Aseguramiento de la Calidad de la Educación, 2011). With the first law the fundamental right to education was given constitutional status without, however, touching sensitive issues such as the role of profit in education. The second law sought to define which institutional actor would provide the best means of ensuring quality standards in education – a subsecretary in the Education Ministry or an autonomous regulator’s office (superintendencia). To sum up, our analysis of the CAP shows three principal problems for civil society in its relations with the state: the management of and strategic adaptation to the CAP’s formal mechanisms, interacting with the CAP’s complex form of representativity, and a deficit of deliberative power on the part of the state. To observe how these institutional limitations, and practices, which mix science, politics and institutions, impacted on civil society, we compare the 2006 student mobilizations with those which took place in 2011, which remain unresolved at the time of writing. Such a comparison will allow identification of which socio-political conditions have changed to permit the mobilizations to achieve greater success than did those of 2006. Those students again? Lessons from the mobilizations of 2006 and 2011 in comparative perspective

It is useful to compare the wave of student protests in 2011 to those in 2006, as they have generated a previously unseen level of strong 104

Continuities between both movements and lessons from the CAP  Among the continuities between both movements, one of the most notable is the unchanged content of their critique of the Chilean educational system. The CAP and a later Advisory Council for Quality in Third-Level Education (Gobierno de Chile 2008) contributed to the demobilization 105

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popular support for student demands throughout the country. The promise by President Piñera of a ‘revolution’ in education, to make 2011 ‘the year for third-level education’ (Gobierno de Chile 2011a), further emboldened the social actors involved to press their demands. One of the first to react was the Chilean Council of University Rectors (CRUCH), which showed its irritation at being excluded from negoti­ ations in June 2010 on key changes to the system, including giving private universities access to public funds (La Tercera, 20 June 2010, pp. 26–7). The measure was strongly questioned by the rector of the University of Chile, Victor Pérez, who denounced the fact that private universities flagrantly broke the law by making a profit despite the fact that they were officially non-profit institutions. Indeed, Monckeberg (2008) shows that in the 1990s these institutions provided their business partners with large profits through the creation of ‘mirror companies’, with no visible links to the universities, but which collected the dividends from their investments in the university sector primarily through the property market. In this way, what began as a sectoral demand for inclusion resulted in large-scale protests being called first by the CONFECH, but then incorporating students in private universities and technical colleges. After three months of national stoppages, and various failed attempts to start negotiations, students and government finally sat down on 27 September 2011, though students continued the occupations of educational institutions and refused to withdraw the threat of further disruption. Not even the announcement of a National Agreement for Education (Gobierno de Chile 2011b) by the president, including lower student loan rates, more funds for the educational system and greater inspection powers for the state, had managed to assuage the student movement’s mistrust of the government. The removal of the minister for education, Joaquin Lavín, on 18 July, owing to his investments in private third-level institutions, and the appointment of a new minister for education, Felipe Bulnes, helped to finally establish negotiations with the students. Yet this only took place after education workers staged a national strike, and a student, Manuel Gutiérrez, was killed during protests, reportedly by a police bullet.

of protest activity, without in reality satisfying student demands. The Council was in fact announced despite the fact that the student bloc decided to resign from the CAP a week before publication of the final report owing to dissatisfaction with its contents. This increased student mistrust of state institutions, especially Congress, as they seemed incapable of responding to their demands, which from the students’ point of view were essential. It is for this reason that the later 2011 movement has shown itself so reticent to enter into negotiations, aiming to maximize its mobilizing capacity instead of looking for an immediate solution to its demands through negotiation. Students’ demands in the 2011 protests are a continuation of those of the 2006 movement, especially those articulated by the Social Bloc – namely, revision of state policy on profit in education, urgent re­ vision of municipal management of educational establishments, and processes to ensure quality in education. On this last point, issues arose over the role of the public sector (Brunner and Peña 2011), and the perverse characteristics of the higher education market with universities charging exorbitant fees which contribute to students incurring unmanageable levels of debt (Meller 2011). In order to increase its mobilizing power, the 2011 movement further stressed its non-party character. At a time when politics in general is under scrutiny by the public, the new movement adapted from the ‘penguins’ a tactic of ensuring the majority appeal of and support for their demands within wider society. This was further strengthened by the use of imaginative, non-violent forms of protest,10 capturing the public’s imagination while making the criminalization of the movement difficult. In these ways, the student movement of 2011 managed, as their counterparts did in 2006, to transcend mere sectoral and corporate interests, invoking instead common sense and the public interest through their demands. New conditions? Changes in state–civil society relations

A principal argument of this chapter is that the Chilean transition socio-political matrix has been dissolving at least since the student mobilizations of 2006. The consequences of this dissolution could be the emergence of a civil society more autonomous of the state, but one which nevertheless will continue to direct its main demands at the state. Evidently the ‘electoral turn’ (Castiglioni 2010) which resulted in the election of Sebastian Piñera and the right for the first time since the return to democracy accelerated this divorce between civil society and the state. Both spheres could distinguish themselves more 106

Notes 1  Translation by Barry Cannon. 2  The Concertación de Partidos por la Democracia (loosely translated as the ‘Party Agreement for Democracy’ and usually known simply as the Concertación) was formed as a political pact to help defeat the dictatorship of General Augusto Pino­chet through the ballot box. After victory at the referendum

of 1988, it was formed by four political parties of the centre and centre left: Partido Democrata Cristiano (PDC – Christian Democrats), ­Partido Radical Social Demócrata (PRSD – Radical Social Democratic Party), Partido Socialista (PS – Socialist Party) and Partido por la ­Democracia (PPD – Democratic Party).

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clearly as a result, revealing the divergences in their social projects. In this sense, it can be said that the student protests are part of a wider sense of general protest being felt in Chile since the highly publicized ‘successful’ rescue of the thirty-three trapped miners from the San José mine in October 2010. From that moment, with protests led by Mapuche indigenous communities and environmental activists against two major energy projects,11 Chile has seen the beginning of a national wave of protest of which the student mobilizations are a key part. Ultimately it is a wider dissatisfaction with the fundamental neoliberal character of the Chilean socio-economic model which explains the massive size of the student protests. This wave of protest against the ‘triumphant’ neoliberal model (Gómez Leyton 2006) could be explained by the abandonment by the Piñera government of mechanisms for political inclusion implemented by the previous Concertación government, causing trust in the government to erode. As Silva (2009) contends, the right-wing change of government could result in an alteration in the perception of institutional limits, leading to an explosion of accumulated demands which are now being channelled into protests against the neoliberal policies developed in the educational sector. Examining Chilean civil society through the prism of the student protests of 2006 and 2011 allows us to detect a strengthening of its autonomy and an increased confidence in its demands. It remains to be seen, however, whether both these tendencies will develop into mechanisms of social vigilance, allowing it to become a counterweight to the power of the state as in liberal theories on civil society–state relations. Rather, in a context of increasing disillusion with transition-era institutions, demands are now directed at more popular participation in decision-making, a prominent example of which is students’ demand for a referendum to resolve these controversies in the education sector.

3  ‘Technopols’ are agents who have both technical and political capital. This allowed them to hold key posts in successive Concertación governments, especially in government and presidential general ­secretariats and ministries of finance, foreign affairs, defence and labour. 4  These are a series of measures that the dictatorship imposed on the new democracy to ensure its continued control of democratization processes. 5  Senators appointed by state institutions rather than through the popular vote. 6  Key laws passed by the dictatorship which could only be reformed with the support of a minimum of two-thirds of the Senate. Usually organic constitutional laws (‘leyes orgánicas constitucionales’, LOCs). A key example in this context is the Education LOC, passed by the dictatorship prior to the return to democracy. 7  Presidential Advisory Councils (CAPs – Consejos de Asesoramiento Presidenciales) were fora for dialogue created by President Michelle Bachelet to advise the government and create consensus with civil society in such areas as pensions, children’s services and working conditions. Though led by experts, in the case of the Education CAP, social movement actors also participated.

For a comprehensive study of CAPs, see Aguilera (2009). 8  The high inequality in Chile has been measured by the Gini index. For a historical overview, see stats.oecd.org/Index. aspx?DataSetCode=INEQUALITY, accessed 24 February 2012. 9  In his annual Te Deum, for Chile’s national day, 18 September 2011. See Documentos de la Iglesia, ‘La patria, un patrimonio que es regalo y tarea’, documentos.iglesia. cl/conf/documentos_sini.ficha. php?mod=documentos_sini&id= 4130&swvolver=yes&descripcion=, accessed 10 October 2011. 10  For example, the ‘Marathon for education’, with a 1,800-hour jog around the presidential Moneda ­Palace in the June–August 2011 ­period: www.nytimes.com/2011/08/ 05/world/americas/05chile.html, ­accessed 3 February 2012); the ‘Kissing Protest’ on 7 July 2011: www. bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america14066467, accessed 3 February 2012; and the ‘Thriller Protest’, based on the famous Michael Jackson dance, on 25 June 2011: www. huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/25/ chile-thriller-protest-studentsmichael-jackson-dance_n_884531. html, accessed 3 February 2011. 11  The construction of the thermoelectric plant Barrancones (Region 4) and the hydroelectric project Hydroaysén in Aysen Region.

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8 | The return of the state and new extractivism: what about civil society? B arbara H ogenboom

The quest for supremacy of the state over the market, and of politics over the economy, is a key coinciding characteristic of the various new democratic ‘lefts’ in Latin America. While neoliberal regimes attempted to depoliticize the governance of minerals, the issue has become extremely repoliticized over the past few years. The progressive regimes aim at a more prominent role of the state in redistribution as well as in their country’s insertion into the global economy. As the neoliberalized relations between state, market and civil society with regard to natural resources such as minerals, land and water gave rise to multiple mobilizations, these resources have become a spearhead in Latin America’s post-Washington Consensus development debate and policy reforms.1 The reforms of economic policies by progressive regimes have been most profound in the sectors of hydrocarbons (oil and gas) and mining, including new regulations, higher tax takes and some forms of nationalization. Raising the state’s control over and the public sector’s share in the extraction of these key minerals seemed fair to most Latin American citizens. It was also deemed necessary to pay for the expansion of social programmes since the primary sector embodies the main source of public revenues in resource-rich countries. The international context for this policy shift has presented obstacles and opportunities. Next to foreign criticism and pressures by both cor­porate and governmental actors, there have also been beneficial external trends: the global commodity boom and the economic growth and global expansion of China eased the implementation of post-neoliberal mineral reforms and added to their success. However, this new extractivism, as Eduardo Gudynas (2010: 66–7) stipulates, also implies a continued dependency on global markets and foreign companies, and a neglect of the negative economic, social and ecological effects of mineral extraction. The aim of this chapter is to analyse the policy shift from neoliberal 111

to progressive regimes in Latin America, and its implications for state– society relations. This implies assessing political as well economic trends, and including the complexities of the relations between the state and civil society. As Kirby and Cannon mention in this volume’s introduction, civil society is not a fixed entity; it is dialectically and continuously shaped and reshaped by the state as well as by the contending social forces that try to appropriate this ‘space’ and to influence the state. Neoliberal mineral policies and civil society resistance

Since colonization, Latin America’s role in the world system has gone through several phases but it has always been determined by its mineral wealth and by its agricultural production (see Galeano 1973). Despite five centuries of exploitation and plunder, the region is still the world’s leading source of metals: iron ore (24 per cent), copper (21 per cent), gold (18 per cent), nickel (17 per cent), zinc (21 per cent), bauxite (27 per cent) and silver. It also holds major oil reserves: Venezuela has 80 billion barrels, Mexico and Brazil about 12 billion barrels each, and Ecuador 4.6 billion barrels. While the manufacturing and service sectors have expanded, Latin America continues to depend economically on exporting this mineral wealth. This is most visible in the case of countries that are rich in one or a few particular resources. From 2000 to 2004 oil made up 83.4 per cent of Venezuela’s total exports, copper represented 45.0 per cent of Chile’s exports, nickel 33.2 per cent of Cuba’s exports, and gold, copper and zinc 32.9 per cent of those of Peru. Together with agricultural production, the extraction of oil, gas and metals remains central to the region’s exports. From 2008 to 2009, the exports of primary commodities accounted for 38.8 per cent of the total in Latin America (Campodónico 2008; CEPAL 2010a; UNCTAD 2007: 87). In the context of the region’s extreme social, economic and, indeed, political inequalities, conflicts over the concentrated pockets of mineral wealth have a long history too. During the nineteenth century Latin American states had been able to resist most of the popular revolutionary tendencies and continued to serve the interests of foreign companies and national economic elites, but this changed in the twentieth century. To allow for a state-controlled and gradual democratization and modernization, many countries nationalized part of their minerals and created large state companies to explore, extract and/or refine them. This trend started with the nationalization of oil, first in Bolivia (1937) and then in Mexico (1938) and Venezuela (1943), 112

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and continued with nationalizations and/or the creation of state-owned companies: the public mining company Companhia Vale do Rio Doce was created in Brazil (1942), tin was nationalized in Bolivia (1952), Brazil’s state-owned oil company Petrobras was created (1953), copper was nationalized in Peru (late 1960s) and in Chile (1971), and oil was again nationalized in Venezuela (1976). While these nationalizations would become part of the overall development model of import substitution industrialization (ISI), in most cases they originated from citizens’ resentment and labour struggles against foreign companies that were making huge profits while exploiting their workers and hardly paying taxes. In the 1980s and 1990s, the tide turned and Latin American governments profoundly restructured their oil, gas and mining sectors. The economic circumstances clearly worked against state ownership: falling world market prices for minerals, the global economic crisis and the region’s debt crisis all made it costly to hold state-owned enterprises and make investments. And as global neoliberalism triumphed (ideologically, politically and economically), civil society groups and political parties that aimed at a statist (and/or societal) counterweight against foreign capital’s power were weakened, and instead a young generation of technocrats emerged that helped to implement new regulations favoured by international financial institutions and national economic elites. Turning the private sector into the predominant force for economic development was the main objective of both international and national policies of liberalization, and this required a strongly reduced role of the state in the economy (see Fernández Jilberto and Hogenboom 2008a). The neoliberal approach to the mining and energy sector implied a policy U-turn and the extractive industries were among the most deeply reformed. Previously, oil and other minerals had been regarded as strategic materials and the central government controlled and regulated and taxed these resources more heavily than other commodities. Yet, under the Washington Consensus, to attract foreign direct investment in this sector a rigorous dismantling of the established system was undertaken. Next to privatizations, the new regime provided for lower taxes, a freeing of capital flows and more labour flexibility. In addition, the new policies were locked into fiscal stability clauses (for example in Chile and Peru) and into bilateral investment treaties that offer foreign investors national treatment with respect to mining rights and the right to be compensated for future policies that would harm their investments.

While neoliberal reforms attempted to depoliticize mining policies, picturing extractive industries as a normal instead of a strategic sector, to many Latin American citizens there is something special about ‘their’ minerals. Although large state-owned oil and mining companies often suffered from bad management, corruption, debts and low revenues, the historical nationalizations of minerals were widely perceived and (later on) politically represented as a highlight of independent national development, sovereignty, anti-imperialism and patriotism. These public companies had also provided cheap commodities such as low national energy prices, and relatively well-paid (and strongly unionized) jobs. The reprivatization of mineral extraction was thus seen by many citizens as a loss of their nation’s ‘crown jewels’ and perceived as unfair since the revenues of this natural wealth should belong to the nation and benefit the people instead of (foreign) corpor­ ations. While orthodox economic theory (politically dominant at that time) claims that state companies tend to be inefficient and corrupt, and that everyone is better off with modern and competitive private companies, in reality many citizens experienced privatizations and other neoliberal policies causing higher prices, high unemployment rates and growing inequality. A brief account of changes in Venezuela, Bolivia, Guatemala and Brazil illustrates how the neoliberalization of minerals gave way to strong civic discontent and social reactions throughout the region. In the 1990s in Venezuela, the so-called Oil Opening was the most important element of the neoliberal reforms of the governments of Carlos Andrés Pérez (1989–93) and Rafael Caldera (1993–98). The state-owned oil company PDVSA was not privatized, but private companies (mostly multinationals) were allowed to become majority shareholder in joint ventures with PDVSA. These and other neoliberal policies, including major budget cuts, caused widespread popular discontent, and in the years following the massive protests of 1989 known as the Caracazo, Venezuela went through a series of organized protests and spontaneous actions (Ellner 2010b). In Bolivia, the first Sánchez de Lozada government (1993–97) implemented a package of ‘second generation’ reforms, including new hydrocarbon legislation and privatization (so-called capitalization), which were extremely generous for private companies. The state abandoned direct operations as the state-owned gas and oil company YPFB was privatized, and the new Law on Hydrocarbons reduced taxes and fees. This new system turned out to be a seedbed of civic discontent, especially as large new gas reserves were discovered in South America’s poorest country. In effect, in October 2003, after 114

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Sánchez de Lozada (during his second presidency, 2002–03) announced the plan to export Bolivian liquid natural gas to the United States via Chile, a broad range of social movements took to the streets. These sweeping protests, known as the gas war or guerra de octubre, lasted a month and forced Sánchez de Lozada to flee the country (Assies 2004). In Guatemala, the government decided to lower mining royalties substantially and grant mining companies free access to the large quantities of water they need for their operations. To attract TNCs like Glamis Gold to its western highlands, the government also made large investments in territorial restructuring, using a market-rate loan from the World Bank. The fact that the government spent substantial public resources on attracting private investors at a time when many people were suffering from poverty and the economic crisis caused citizens’ anger and protests. According to Eric Holt-Gimenéz (2008: 29–30), ‘the citizens of Guatemala are paying the World Bank for the privilege of making foreign companies like Glamis Gold very rich’. Finally, in Brazil, in 2007, a civic plebiscite was held on the status of mining company Vale do Rio Doce (CVRD or Vale, currently the world’s largest mining firm). The plebiscite was organized by the two largest social organizations, the movement of landless peasants MST and the central union confederation CUT, together with 200 other organizations. It turned out that ten years after Vale’s privatization, 94 per cent of the 3.7 million participating Brazilians preferred a renationalization (Americas Program Report, 27 July 2007). The way in which privatizations of state companies were executed added to the dissatisfaction. The often non-transparent and corrupt privatization practices, and the subsequent weak oversight institutions designed to prevent monopolies and cartels, increased the sense that the new policies mainly served the political elite and ‘Big Business’: MNCs and national economic groups that became the new corporate owners of privatized companies (Fernández Jilberto and Hogenboom 2008b). Owing to the historically low mineral prices at that time, the bargaining position of governments vis-à-vis TNCs was weak, and ‘some of the mining codes then adopted and some mining agreements negoti­ated may have been overgenerous to foreign investors’ (UNCTAD 2007: 161). Next to the neoliberal influence of IFIs, some governments of the main home countries of these TNCs played an active role in liberalizing the mining sector in Latin America.2 Since the late 1990s there has been an increasing incidence of ­local protests against large private (privatized) mining and oil projects, in particular those employed by transnational corporations. With ­respect

to mining, the Observatory of Latin American Mining Conflicts, ­OCMAL, has registered 155 major socio-environmental conflicts, in particular in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru.3 Various stakeholders, especially campesinos, indigenous groups, workers and small-scale miners, have resisted new investments that give a little (few jobs and development) but take and/or damage a lot (land, water, air). The numerous mobilizations against extractive activities centre on land and water rights, territorial claims and the notorious environmental record of extractive industries (see North et al. 2006; Bebbington 2007). While some of these local protests take place in marginalized areas and receive little external support or attention, other conflicts have become well known: the resistance of Peruvian farmers and other locals against gold mining in Tambogrande and Yanacocha; the mobilization of Mayan communities against silver and gold mines in Guatemala; and various indigenous protests against extractive activities in the Amazon, including the long history of mobilization against Chevron/ Texaco in Ecuador. Many of these local protests have been related to the growing strength of indigenous movements (see Yashar 2005) and/ or the increasing popular resistance to neoliberalism and globalization in Latin America (see Harris 2003). As a result, both local protests and national mobilizations against the neoliberal policies and practices of mineral extraction ended up linked to social movement struggles for participatory politics and a post-neoliberal development model. Global reconfigurations

Whereas the neoliberalization of mineral policies was easier to legitimize in the context of a crisis and low commodity prices, the reforms of Latin American progressive regimes have been eased by two key global economic trends of the 2000s: booming commodity markets and China’s rapid rise. The steep rise in oil prices started in 1999, whereas the prices of metals started rising in 2004. In some of the following years the average value of these commodities was more than three times as high as in 2000. As a result, revenues increased and large new investments were made in exploration and exploitation, resulting in a rapid expansion of extraction. For instance, from 1999 to 2006 copper revenues increased twelve times in Chile and forty-six times in Peru (Campodónico 2008). As the boom has greatly increased the mineral sector’s profitability, transnational corporations have been more willing and able to renegotiate taxes and accept greater state intervention. And, interestingly, this commodity boom did not end with the global economic crisis starting in 2008. Together with the 116

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balanced financial situation of most Latin American countries, this explains the fact that the recent crisis has affected the region only mildly – especially when compared to the crisis of the 1980s. The rise of China was the other important global development for Latin America. After three decades of high levels of economic growth and integration in the global economy, China has not only grown to be the world’s second-largest economy, it has also become a major consumer of natural resources and commodities, including many which originate from Latin America. This ‘factory of the world’ is now the main export destination for Brazil, Chile and Peru, and the second for countries like Argentina and Venezuela. Since 2005, Chile, Peru and Costa Rica have even signed bilateral free trade agreements with China, partly motivated by the potential of Chinese access to, as well as investments in, minerals such as Chilean copper and various Peruvian ores. Next to increasing volumes, China’s rise was a central element in the global rise of commodity prices that was so beneficial for these resource-rich countries. As Rhys Jenkins (2011) has calculated, this ‘China effect’ on global prices for oil and metals was of even greater impact on Latin America’s extra revenues from mineral exports than the direct effect of increased exports to China. Recently China has also become a relevant investor in oil and mining. In Ecuador, for instance, CNPC and Sinopec bought the most profitable oil block, Tarapoa, in 2005. The global crisis that started in 2008 has enabled the government of China, Chinese state-owned banks and (mostly also state-owned) Chinese TNCs to step up the expansion of China’s own ‘global champions’. In 2010, China invested massively in Brazil ($9.6  billion) and Argentina ($5.5 billion). In addition, China has become a source of large energy-backed loans to countries like Brazil, Venezuela and Ecuador (Downs 2011: 46–53).4 These new South–South relations are primarily about economic interests, but they may also be viewed as being part of the rising ‘Global South’ (Fernández Jilberto and Hogenboom 2010). And although the new relations between Latin America and China are not ideologically motivated, it is interesting to see that from very different backgrounds and through different processes, both currently favour a development model aimed at reconciling state and market. Furthermore, the new Global South is increasingly important in the global economy and international politics. Although US, Canadian and European TNCs overall remain the key investors in Latin American oil and mining, other emerging countries are expanding their investments in extraction in the region too. Compared to Chinese investments, what TNCs

from India do in Latin America may not seem impressive, but they are gradually expanding. Moreover, the Brazilian giants Vale and Petrobras have been spreading their wings regionally and globally, as a result of the high commodity prices. Progressive regimes and new extractivism

The social mobilizations of the 1990s and the political changes of the 2000s demonstrate that the attempt to depoliticize mineral policies was not successful. Neoliberal arrangements became a highly contentious issue, and since the turn of the century minerals have become a spearhead in the political agenda of Latin America’s progressive regimes. Citizens voted for parties and presidential candidates favouring state control over extractive industries and a higher share of mineral revenues for the public sector. When in office, several left-wing regimes have indeed performed a re-regulation (through reforms of legal codes, laws and constitutions), ‘retaxation’ and sometimes also renationalization of mineral extraction. The first and most profound anti-neoliberal restructuring occurred in Venezuela under President Hugo Chávez. Since 2001, Venezuela has returned to a majority share in oil extraction for its state-owned company PDVSA, and has substantially raised the royalties and taxes for foreign oil companies. In addition, Chávez made important changes to the PDVSA management, thereby increasing his control over the company. In Bolivia, on 1 May 2006, President Morales decreed that the public sector’s take of gas profits would be raised from 18 per cent to 82 per cent, thereby turning the division between public and private sector upside down. State-owned company YPFB has regained tasks it had undertaken until privatization, and ‘production-sharing’ contracts with transnational corporations were turned into ‘servicing’ contracts. These reforms were presented as part of a new development strategy: moving from purely extraction activities to additional production activities like refining. In practice, a lack of investments and ongoing dependency on a few companies have made it more difficult to realize the revolutionary strategy in Bolivia than in Venezuela. Renegotiations with private companies resulted in around 50 per cent tax and royalty payments on gas, whereas it has proved hard to find foreign investors for iron mining in El Mutun and lithium mining in Uyuni under the new pro-development model. Under President Rafael Correa, Ecuador has made similar reforms in its mineral policies. Among other things, his government issued a comprehensive development plan and Correa decreed a rise in the state’s share of windfall oil profits from 50 to 99 per cent. In contrast, in 118

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Brazil President Lula opted to by and large continue his predecessor’s economic policies, including the tax rules in the oil and mining sector, and the status of companies like Vale and Petrobras.5 Only in 2008, after the discovery of new deep-sea oil reserves off Brazil’s coast, did President Lula announce that, next to Petrobras, the public sector’s control over these oil reserves and revenues should be protected by the creation a new state company: Petrosal. Apart from being the most important areas of reform, mining, oil and gas have formed the main source of the much-needed additional budgets for social programmes. In Brazil, despite Lula’s initial continuity of mineral policies, social spending increased, especially through the popular social programmes Fome Zero and Bolsa Familia. Yet in 2008, Lula proposed to explicitly link mineral wealth to pro-poor development: the revenues from future deep-sea oil drilling should be put ‘in the hands of the Brazilian people’ in order to pay off ‘the debt with the poor [­dating back] 500 years’. Instead of more cash transfer programmes, Lula proposed to create a development fund, using the future resources for education, healthcare and technological development. In Venezuela, Chávez aimed at using oil wealth and PDVSA for poverty reduction from the start of his presidency. With the new healthcare, education and food programmes of the government (misiones) and direct social spending by PDVSA (7.3 per cent of GDP in 2006), real social spending tripled between 1998 and 2006. This trend, together with high national economic growth, helped Venezuela’s poverty rate to decrease to 27.5 per cent in 2007, from 43.9 per cent in 1998 (Weisbrot and Sandoval 2008a).6 In Ecuador, the new mineral policies, in combination with booming oil markets and the country’s dollar economy, caused the state revenues to expand and allowed President Correa to double welfare payments, subsidize electricity for poor households, and make extra social investments in education, healthcare and micro-credits. In Bolivia, the new development plan Bolivia Digna led to social programmes to end poverty, exclusion and marginalization, while an elected assembly formulated a new Constitution that aims at redistribution, increasing the central government’s power and granting indigenous peoples more control over the natural resources within their territories. The new tax on gas profits finances cash grant programmes for poor children and pensioners: Bono Juancito Pinto and Renta Dignidad.7 Taken together, these major post-neoliberal shifts in economic and social policy implied the end of the Washington Consensus in Latin America, but they have also been criticized for being populist. José Antonio Ocampo (2005: 294) has noted that among the profound

problems with the Washington Consensus was ‘its tendency to uphold a hierarchical view of the relation between economic and social policies’ and ‘a tendency to forget that it is citizens who should choose what economic and social institutions they prefer’. In the 2000s, Latin America’s progressive regimes generally used the state to counter these tendencies, which had caused both a social and a democratic deficit, and end the market democracies that had been formed in the 1980s and 1990s. Another coinciding characteristic of these governments is their ‘bottom-up’ background: next to broad popular support, most of them have been able to win elections owing to a strong basis in social movements, and their calls for an alternative development model and democratization through political participation. Using revenues from mineral extraction for social expenditures, and reforms to again turn oil, gas and mining into strategic sectors, have added to the popularity of and electoral support for presidents like Chávez and Correa. However, these policies have also been labelled by some as ‘petropopulism’. For instance, Javier Corrales and Michael Penfold (2011: 8) conceptualize chavismo as ‘a political project that seeks to undermine traditional checks and balances by building an electoral majority based on a radical social discourse of inclusion, glued together by property redistribution plus vast social handouts extracted from the oil industry’. And Correa, who like Chávez also refers to his regime as socialism of the twenty-first century and a socialist revolution, is according to Catherine M. Conaghan (2008b) ruling as a plebiscitary presidency, whose decrees, charisma and ‘playing the media’ have rendered the National Congress totally irrelevant. While Latin America’s new mineral policies are more responsive to the preferences and needs of the majority of citizens than the neoliberal policies of the 1980s and 1990s, there continue to be many debates, tensions and conflicts over extractive industries and mineral revenues. Some of this resistance came from political opponents,  groups that feared a loss of previous privileges or liberties, and/or groups that  feared populist (and corrupt) abuse of the additional revenues. In Venezuela, in 2002 and 2003, massive anti-Chávez mobilizations followed the president’s decision to increase control over PDVSA. In Bolivia, the new gas policies, together with the new policies on ownership and distribution of land, were a source of strong resentment among groups within the more developed media luna provinces, which caused serious political conflicts from 2006 to 2008. In particular, groups from the provinces of Tarija and Pando feared losing their privileged access to gas revenues; in 2007 the per capita hydrocarbon 120

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revenues in the gas-producing province of Tarija were $491, and in the non-gas-producing province of Pando $751, while those in La Paz, with its large and poor population, were $27 (Weisbrot and Sandoval 2008b). Less expected under the new political and economic circumstances were the high number of mobilizations and protests by communities and indigenous groups against mineral extraction. Throughout Latin America, over the past few years, local resistance to oil drilling and mining projects in or near communities and territories has increased. Helped by trans-border cooperation and transnational NGOs (via the Internet), this has also become increasingly visible in the international media, especially in cases of violent conflict (for example, Bagua, Peru; Yasuní, Ecuador). Equally surprising is the fact that left-wing presidents like Morales in Bolivia and Correa in Ecuador have reacted almost as negatively and (at least verbally) aggressively to these local struggles for the protection of land, water and protected ecologies as the centrist government of Alan García in Peru, labelling them infantile, anti-patriotic and illegal (Bebbington 2009). One might have thought that the increased state control vis-à-vis TNCs over extractive industries and an end to the friendly neoliberal deals between political elites and ‘big business’ would lead to more respect for formal rights of consultation and impact assessments and allow local groups to have better access to information. Similarly, one would expect that the activist (syndicalist) and indigenous roots of many of the leaders of the ‘new left’ would lead to a better understanding by the central government of local movements, and more participatory approaches to solving problems and resolving tensions. What explains this expanded local resistance to resource extraction under progressive regimes, and the latter’s unwillingness to accommodate concerns for the negative environmental, economic and social effects of mining and drilling? What we witness appears to be a shift of conflicts due to the new political constellation in most Latin American countries as well as the new global economic context in which they operate. The broad popular resistance to and social mobilization against neoliberal policies, poverty and inequality that formed the basis for the leftist electoral victories diminished when the left entered the presidential palaces and implemented social programmes that brought some quick fixes to extreme poverty. Yet while this institutionalization of the left resulted in a degree of national demobilization, local discontent and mobilizations against other injustices have not necessarily diminished. The global commodity boom has made both private and state companies very eager to intensify mineral extraction, explore new

oil wells and mines and reopen mines and wells that had previously become unprofitable. Mineral extraction has thus been intensified and is geographically spreading, thereby massively increasing material flows from Latin America to China and other centres of the global economy, as well as the concomitant local environmental destruction and threats to livelihoods. The fact that extractive industries continue to be a political battle­ ground is also related to the process of repoliticization itself, which has given way to new political expectations and dependencies. In their political campaigns most of the left-wing leaders stressed poverty eradication, political participation and inclusion in general and local democracy and/or autonomy of indigenous people in particular. Furthermore, in countries like Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, important constitutional reforms have taken place and new participatory institutions have been created. While these have important emancipatory elements, there are in practice several obstacles to moving towards a more participatory and pluralist democracy (see Schilling-Vacaflor 2011). Indigenous peoples, campesinos and environmental groups that oppose mining and oil extraction usually do not find their progressive presidents open to their views and demands. On the contrary, President Correa has even verbally attacked them, speaking of ‘ecological infantilism’ and ‘infantile indigenism’ that impede mining.8 Based on the political analysis, however, this does not come as a surprise; the electoral popularity of these presidents depends greatly on social programmes, economic growth and an overall development model based on the extraction of mineral wealth. Indeed, as Anthony Bebbington (2009: 19) writes, ‘dissent shows no sign of going away’. Conclusions

What has been achieved by Latin American progressive regimes in the past few years is remarkable compared to the social results of their neoliberal predecessors: more public revenues, more social spending, and less poverty and inequality. While the commodity boom can partly explain these successes, most governments also actively increased their budgets by taking a larger share of the mineral revenues. It is especially in this sector where progressive regimes stepped away from Washington Consensus economic policies, resulting in more state control (vis-à-vis TNCs) and state sovereignty (vis-à-vis IFIs and other foreign interference). However, although some small steps have been taken towards turning mineral wealth into a basis for the development of industrialization, the resource-rich countries’ dependency on extraction 122

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continues, as does the dependency on global commodity markets and on foreign investors in oil, gas and mining. This left-wing shift and the chain of economic and political dependencies on minerals have an impact on state–civil society relations. As mentioned in the introduction to this chapter and this book, civil society is not a fixed entity, but rather a sphere that is continuously shaped and reshaped by the state and contending social forces. On the one hand, progressive regimes face strong opposition from the centre and right, from parties but also from citizens and organizations that question or resist progressive economic and social policies. This opposition, which can count on the support of the national economic elite, foreign capital and other powerful losers from the mineral policies and redistribution aims of the left, does not necessarily need to be large or able to mobilize masses in order to form an obstacle for progressive rule. While it is logical that a state should try to weaken such obstacles, this has in some cases also caused (radical) left-wing governments to attack critical organizations and delegitimize their concerns, interests and leaders in ways that arguably are outside the realm of democratic governance. Simultaneously, there have been state attempts to rein in civil society organizations that are overall supportive of progressive rule but do want to remain independent representatives of particular interests. Kees Biekart (2005: 90) notes that historical trends should be a warning to the social movements that gave rise to the new progressive governments: they are running the risk of suffering a backlash as ‘these new governments will try to co-opt the leaders of these movements and to neutralise their autonomous social power. After all, strong social movements will likely undermine the room for manoeuvring space of the new governments if they continue to mobilise their constituency.’ Various progressive states have indeed adopted co-optive strategies towards organized civil society, sometimes by granting them a special role and/or benefits in the new social programmes. And evidently, these social investments (which some choose to label ‘populist’) win left-wing governments great popularity among poor people and their organizations. It is important to mention that such co-opt-and-rule attempts may also come from other than government institutions, as in the case of Venezuela, where PDVSA itself has been directly managing or assisting several misiones. In short, Latin American progressive states do not react favourably to civil society organizations that criticize or resist their mineral policies or specific extractive projects. These anti-extractivist protests have

received international activist (and academic) recognition as being part of a global environmental justice movement, but the progressive states mostly try to ignore them. Even though the social make-up of the protesters – marginalized rural citizens, campesinos, indigenous people – may in many cases make them ‘natural’ left-wing voters, the progressive presidents pose strict limits on their demands and mobilizations. In the new conflicts over mining, local communities again face closed doors, ‘ridiculization’ and indeed repression. And while at the time of neoliberal rule these local activists could count on solidarity from national social movements, under progressive rule such local protests have become more isolated. Especially for small and marginalized (indigenous) groups living in isolated areas, either in the Amazon – where most of the oil drilling takes place – or in the Andes – with its numerous metal mines – this new national context is disheartening and intimidating. The politicization of minerals in Latin America seems to be an ongoing development. Initially, in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it stemmed from citizens’ discontent with their miserable living conditions and the greedy national elites and foreign com­panies. The subsequent nationalizations of mineral wealth were perceived by many as a fair and patriotic development, but also caused new problems and greed. In the following phase, neoliberal regimes ­attempted to depoliticize mineral policies, but this failed. Repoliticization, especially with respect to the privatizations, became important when civic discontent merged with other grievances against neoliberal regimes, and civil society organizations mobilized people, calling for an alternative development model. The most recent phase of politicization started when left-wing presidential candidates and parties were elected and implemented post-neoliberal mineral policies and social programmes. Given the recently intensified extraction of resources the story has not ended. Apart from a few national organizations that propose alternatives to the new extractivism, there are mainly local groups that want to decide for themselves about mining and oil drilling near their communities and therefore mobilize against the state. Yet as the new mineral policies, helped by the global commodity boom, bring major social and economic benefits, the progressive regimes prefer to keep this a highly centralized field of governance. With the massive expansion of extractive industries throughout the region and the general unwillingness to consider civic demands for environmental justice and a post-extractivist development model, the politicization of minerals is likely to deepen in the years to come. 124

1  A previous, longer version of this chapter was published as ‘Depoli­ ticized and Repoliticized Minerals in Latin America’, in the Journal of Developing Societies, 28(2). Financial support by the European Commission (FP7-SSH-2010-3, Grant Agreement no. 266710), as part of the project on Environmental Governance in Latin America and the Caribbean (ENGOV), is gratefully acknowledged. 2  See Kuyek (2006) on Canada’s influential support to Latin American countries with regulatory reforms to open up their mining sector for foreign investments. 3  See the Observatory’s website, www.olca.cl/ocmal/, for details on conflicts since the late 1990s. 4  Latin American countries in need of investment have found that China is interested in investing its vast financial reserves as well as achieving energy security. In 2009, the China Development Bank (CDB) and Petrobras agreed on a $10 ­billion loan (partly for the development of the newly dis­covered oil reserves off Brazil’s coast) while Petrobras agreed to a ten-year supply of 200,000 barrels of oil per day to a subsidiary of Sinopec. With total loans of over $28 billion, Venezuela

is the largest foreign borrower of the CDB (Downs 2011: 46–53). To Ecuador, the CDB, PetroChina and China’s Export-Import Bank have separately issued several loans since 2008, which has turned China into Ecuador’s main source of credit. 5  Officially Petrobras is state owned, but in the 1990s it was partly privatized by selling bonds to private shareholders, and private investors hold 44 per cent of the company (UNCTAD 2007: 117). 6  From 1998 to 2006, the central state’s spending increased from 21.4 per cent to 30 per cent of GDP and social spending from 8.2 per cent to 13.6 per cent of GDP (Weisbrot and Sandoval 2008a). 7  However, Bolivia’s central govern­ment is relatively limited in using extra gas revenues for rapid poverty reduction because of the country’s distribution model in which about half of the mineral revenues are decentrally distributed, flowing to local prefectures, municipalities and universities. 8  President Correa also tried to revoke the legal status of the environmental organization Acción Ecológica in the context of the Yasuní conflict.

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Notes

9 | Indigenous and peasant participation in resource governance in Bolivia and Peru A lmut S chilling - Vacaflor and D avid V ollrath

They will be consulted, the binding or non-binding character of the consultation is not important, but it is important that their opinion will be collected.  (Ollanta Humala, 6 September 2011) The prior consultation is a constitutional mechanism of participatory and direct democracy … The resulting conclusions, agreements or decisions do not have a binding character, but they should be considered by the authorities and representatives of the responsible decision-making entity.  (Art. 39, Bolivian Electoral Law)

The extraction of minerals and hydrocarbons is a booming business in the Andean region, thanks partly to increasing global prices for these non-renewable natural resources. At the same time, extractive industries frequently stand at the centre of contentious politics between social and indigenous movements and their respective states (see Tilly and Tarrow 2007). In Bolivia, in October 2003, social movements that demanded the nationalization of the countries’ gas resources led to the breakdown of Sánchez de Lozada’s government; in Ecuador the new Mining Law caused month-long social protests in 2009; in Colombia the Constitutional Court issued a ruling in 2009 that halted Muriel Mining’s copper exploitation owing to the absence of meaningful prior consultation (Rodríguez-Garavito 2010: 271); and in Peru mining conflicts between the state and local communities as well as within local populations are currently the single most important type of conflict (Defensoría del Pueblo 2010).1 But how did the relationships between states led by governments of the new left and local communities change in the contested terrain of resource governance in a context of globalization? We will try to answer this question by focusing on prior consultations with indigenous and peasant communities affected by extractive activities in Bolivia and Peru. In current resource governance in Peru and Bolivia, the right to prior consultation is of great practical 126

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importance, as this procedure is probably the single most important tool that local communities currently possess to legally resist extractive projects in their habitats; to demand a decision-making role in measures that affect them; to reduce possible social and environmental damages; and to improve their bargaining position on compensation payments and benefit-sharing. Consultation procedures provide formal arenas in which representatives of the state, local populations and the extractive companies directly meet and discuss issues at stake, allowing ‘for contacts between radically different conceptions of development, nature, and human flourishing’ (Rodríguez-Garavito 2010: 273). Thus, researching prior consultations can encompass diverse and often conflicting visions of development as well as providing information about the form of communication between local populations, the state and companies, and about whether affected communities really have a decision-making role in these deliberative arenas, which are generally characterized by considerable power asymmetries. Sen pointed to the importance of citizens’ control over their own development (Sen 1999). This assertion was supported by the result of surveys of over sixty thousand marginalized persons worldwide, carried out for the World Development Report, the main finding of which was that one of their main priorities was that their voice be heard and that they have control over the events that have the greatest impact on their lives (see Narayan 2000). A survey of thirty-eight mining conflicts by the International Council on Mining and Metals (ICMM) similarly found that the single most important community complaint was the failure to obtain their consent prior to implementing mining projects (Laplante and Spears 2008: 76). The investigation of consultation cases in Bolivia and Peru is particularly interesting as on the one hand these countries share many common historic, social and cultural conditions that make them apt for comparison,2 while on the other there are some important differences between them that are likely to contribute to distinct (indigenous–­ peasant) community–state relations in resource governance. Among the differences between Bolivia under Morales’s and Peru under García’s presidencies were the strength of the indigenous movement, which is said to be more strong and unified in Bolivia (Clark and Becker 2007; Van Cott 2005); the (supposedly) post-neoliberal ideology of Bolivia’s government and the ultra-neoliberal ideology of Peru’s government (Bebbington and Humphreys-Bebbington 2010); the more extensive legal recognition of human and environmental rights in Bolivia; and the beginning of a post-liberal plurinational democracy in Bolivia

(Wolff forthcoming), while Peru’s democracy has been embedded in a liberal-representative model, with a very limited recognition of cultural diversity. Thus, it is pertinent to analyse to what extent and in which areas citizen and community participation in resource governance in Morales’s Bolivia and García’s Peru exhibit similarities and differences. More specifically, we ask what prior consultations tell us about state–community relations and the possibility of local populations and indigenous peoples being able to self-determine their development. We will also formulate some hypotheses about likely future changes in Peru due to the recent assumption of a ‘pink-tide’ government under President Ollanta Humala. Bolivia and Peru’s extractivism in the context of globalization

We can observe an increase in natural resource production and dependence (mining, hydrocarbons) in the economies of Bolivia and Peru at the beginning of the twenty-first century (see Bebbington and  Humphreys-Bebbington 2010; Gudynas 2010). In both countries the traditional partitioning of mining in the highlands and oil and gas drilling in the lowlands is not that clear any more: mining concessions nowadays can also be found in the Amazon region and hydrocarbon activities have been extended to non-traditional zones of exploitation. The mining and hydrocarbon concessions very often overlap with the habitat of indigenous and peasant communities as well as increasingly with national parks and protected areas, and cause serious social and environmental impacts at the local level.3 In Bolivia, while in 2001 41.8 per cent of total exports were extractives, this share rose to more than 74 per cent in 2009.4 The production of gas in this period almost doubled and mining production has been growing considerably.5 Moreover, the relatively new trend of producing battery-based automobiles will lead to growing demands for lithium, 49 per cent of the reserve base of which is estimated to lie in the salt flats in Bolivia (Bebbington and Bury 2009: 17296). In the north of the department of La Paz, a non-traditional zone for hydrocarbon activ­ ities, two leased Amazonian exploration blocks now cover 15,000  km2, including large parts of Madidi and Isiboro Securé National Parks (Finer et al. 2008: 5). In Peru, the dependence of the economy on the export of natural resources is considerably less than in Bolivia, but it is growing fast. Already more than half of all peasant communities are estimated to be affected by mining activities (Bebbington and Williams 2008: 190). Moreover, a new hydrocarbon boom has just begun, with the Peruvian 128

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government having delimited about 180 blocks zoned for hydrocarbon activities, covering more than 688,000 km2 of the most species-rich part of the western Amazon (Finer and Orta-Martínez 2010). The extension of Amazon territory covered by hydrocarbon blocks increased from 9 per cent in 2004 to 59 per cent in 2009 (Arévalo and Del Rosario 2010: 19). Despite these similarities, the distinct ideologies of the Morales and García governments can be observed in different resource governance strategies. In Bolivia, the state enhanced its control of the hydrocarbon sector, complying with a central demand of the social movements during the Protest Cycle (2000–05). It renegotiated the contracts with multinational companies, which were ordered to pay a higher price for the extracted gas reserves, and it re-established the leading role of the public enterprise YPFB in all hydrocarbon activities carried out in Bolivian territory (see Mokrani 2010). In the mining sector, the role of the state has equally been strengthened, though to a much smaller extent. At least some new, large-scale mining projects like the copper mine Corocoro and the exploitation of lithium are being led by the public enterprise COMIBOL. A considerable share of resource revenues in Bolivia are being invested in social policies, among them newly created funds for children (Bono Juancito Pinto), for pregnant women and mothers (Bono Juana Azurduy) as well as for elderly persons (Renta Dignidad) (see Radhuber 2010). Peru under President García followed a rather different economic strategy, favouring privatization and the implementation of neo­liberal policies. Multinational corporations in Peru have been given very favourable conditions, such as low taxes and royalties, in order to attract foreign investment. The mining sector in particular has grown immensely, with foreign direct investment (FDI) in the sector increasing by 65 per cent between 2002 and 2007, in contrast to the 12 per cent overall increase in FDI in the same period (Arellano-Yanguas 2011: 620). Despite the promises to review mining contracts during his 2006 presidential campaign, Alan García eventually reached an agreement with the mining companies which excluded royalty payments and windfall taxes (ibid.: 621). Business in Peru has great influence over the state, yet Peruvians – like many Latin American citizens – have been calling for a greater, not lesser, role for the state in the economy (Carrión and Zárate 2011: xxix, 173ff.). This preference is one crucial factor which explains the success of the left-wing and nationalist Ollanta Humala, who included the rollback of neoliberal policies as one of his objectives in his campaign, in the 2011 presidential election.6 The reshaping of state power to

reassert sovereignty over ‘strategic industries’ was a major part of his governmental plan. It comprises the renegotiation of contracts with mining and hydrocarbon corporations and particularly an enhanced role of the public corporation Petroperu (Gana Perú 2010: 85). Humala also promised to introduce a windfall tax on the mining sector, to support the domestic energy supply and to encourage industrialization (ibid.: 59ff.). Like his Bolivian counterpart, the new president is planning to implement extended social policies, after years of failed market-based solutions for welfare problems. A wage floor, subsidies for small-scale farmers, the creation of scholarship funds and a public healthcare system that particularly targets disadvantaged populations were among his social policy proposals (ibid.: 107ff.). Nevertheless, Humala proposed neither a post-extractivist stance nor increased environmental protection as priorities in his governmental programme. The new government took office with some symbolic acts that ought to underline the declared intention of La Gran Transformación (the great change).7 During his inauguration, the new president swore on the 1979 Constitution instead of the current one from 1993, which was enacted after the presidential coup by Alberto Fujimori in April 1992, promoting a strict neoliberal agenda. In the first month of his mandate, the Humala administration moved quickly to implement some of its campaign promises, such as an additional tax on mining profits8 and the promulgation of a new law of prior consultations.9 The contested legal framework of prior consultations

In both Andean countries, resource politics and the extension of the extractive frontiers are strongly contested. Affected local populations in particular, often allied with environmental and human rights organizations, represent an obstacle for mining and hydrocarbon activities. The conflicts over natural resources in Bolivia and Peru occur not only in the political field, but also in the legal field, in a ‘judicialisation of conflicts over collective rights’ (Rodríguez Garavito 2011: 280). Legal claims and reference to international human rights have represented powerful tools for indigenous movements since the 1990s in Latin America. Indigenous and peasant communities affected by mining and hydrocarbon activities in their territories particularly refer to the ILO Convention 169 on the Rights of Indigenous and Tribal Peoples (ILO C169 from 1991) and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP from 2007) when demanding more participation in resource politics. The ILO C169 – implemented in 1995 in Peru and in 1991 in Bolivia – stipulates the right to prior 130

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consultation in its Articles 6 and 15 and the UNDRIP even guarantees indigenous peoples’ right to consent (Art. 32.2, UNDRIP). Other international organizations such as the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank also adopted the standard that local communities affected by resource extraction must be consulted, but they generally draw on weaker versions of the right to consultation than the one that is present in the international human rights instruments (RodríguezGaravito 2010: 285). International human rights instruments stipulate that meaningful consultations must fulfil the following necessary conditions: a) be carried out with good faith, b) be based on a genuine and constant dialogue between the state and the affected communities, c) be carried out prior to the planned measure, d) involve legitimate representatives from all local communities affected, e) be carried out in a social, linguistic and culturally adequate way, f) aim to achieve the consent of the consulted communities, and g) that established agreements be binding (Morris et al. 2009; DPLF 2010). In Bolivia, one of the claims of the II Indigenous Lowland March of 1996 was the implementation of the right to meaningful consultation and the adoption of a law that regulates this procedure (Fuente Jeria 2005: 146). Nevertheless, it was not until Evo Morales assumed the presidency that a Supreme Decree that finally regulated the consultation procedure in the hydrocarbon sector (DS no. 29033 from 2007) – which was very much in line with the visions of the indigenous organizations – was promulgated. The Ayllu organization CONAMAQ (Consejo Nacional de Ayllus y Markas del Qullasuyu) is currently lobbying for the adoption of a general law of prior consultations, which is still outstanding. During the constitutional change process (2006–09) most MAS party representatives supported the incorporation of the right to prior consultation into the new Constitution, but not the stronger version favoured by the indigenous organizations (see Pacto de Unidad 2007), which added that the aim of the consultations should be to achieve the consent of the communities and that agreements should be binding. The version of the majoritarian MAS representatives succeeded and was finally incorporated into the new Constitution. The new Electoral Law passed in 2010 even explicitly stipulates that the results of prior consultations are not binding (Art. 39, Electoral Law). Moreover, in June 2010 it became publicly known that the executive was preparing changes to the hydrocarbon law in order to limit the right to consultation, which was perceived as a block on the economic development of the country.10 In Peru, a law that regulates prior consultations was finally – after

many years of struggles in the legal and political fields – promulgated by President Humala on 7 September 2011. In contrast to former legal norms,11 which did not comply at all with international human rights standards on meaningful consultations and were established without prior consultation with indigenous peoples, the new Consultation Law has been supported by indigenous organizations. It stipulates that indigenous peoples and peasant communities are entitled to the right to prior consultations, which must be implemented by the states (and not by the corporations), must aim to obtain the consent of the affected communities and whose resulting agreements are binding (Consultation Law). A Consultation Law had already been passed one year earlier on 19 May 2010 by Congress, but President García imposed a veto on it and sent it back to Congress with a long list of objections (see Pinto López 2010). The president wrote that consultations should be binding only in the case that the affected persons agreed to the planned measures, but that they could not blockade the general economic interests of the state. Alan García also stated that campesinos of the Andean and coastal regions should not be granted the right to prior consultation. Moreover, he wanted to limit the right to consultation to those communities with formally entitled collective land rights (ibid.). Since taking office, President Humala has announced that he will enforce the implementation of meaningful prior consultations with affected local communities. Nevertheless, we should keep in mind that progressive legal frameworks can be one necessary condition for guaranteeing the decisionmaking role of local communities in issues that affect them, but are not sufficient for their actual implementation. As we will show in our case analyses (see also Laplante and Spears 2008; Rodríguez-Garavito 2010; Garvey and Newell 2005), deliberative inequalities between the state and local affected communities generally represent a considerable hurdle for implementing meaningful consultations and, thus, extralegal mechanisms that reduce existing power asymmetries are badly needed. Among them are: the elaboration of reliable environmental and social impact assessments (EIAs); transparency of the consultation procedure; the empowerment of local communities; the institutional­ ization of the right to prior consultation in independent and effective state entities; as well as the will of corporations to take the voice of local citizens seriously and to implement changes to their originally proposed projects. 132

Bolivia  In the hydrocarbon sector, from 2007 to 2010, twenty-one prior consultations were concluded.12 Many of them were deficient – for example, in terms of the transmission of complete information, the quality of the underlying EIAs and the involvement of all affected communities and their representative organizations. In the mining sector prior consultations have generally been absent. This difference is partly due to the fact that regulating norms exist only in the hydrocarbon sector, but also because of the specific composition of the mining industry which complicates the implementation of prior consultations: ‘Mining exploitation … is not concentrated in the hands of the state and a few huge companies, but it consists of a broader social spectrum including cooperatives, small corporations, the members and families of indigenous and peasant communities’ (DPLF 2011: 42). The copper mine Corocoro in the north-east of Bolivia was among the first mining projects where a (deficient) prior consultation with the affected communities took place (see Bascopé Sanjinés 2010: 95–156; CEADL 2010: 21–3). There, the state company COMIBOL is in charge of a large-scale open-pit copper mining project. The company and the Mining Ministry organized a one-day meeting with some local organizations in April 2009 in which an agreement on the planned project was signed. This consultation did not comply with international human rights standards: complete information was not transmitted to the communities, nor did a real dialogue take place. Moreover, only two out of the dozens of affected Ayllu communities, affiliated to the (government-critical) national organization CONAMAQ, participated in the meeting (Bascopé Sanjinés 2010: 105). Thus, the Ayllu organizations sent a letter of complaint to COMIBOL demanding an adequate consultation procedure. After protracted negotiations and protests, a meeting was finally arranged to take place in November 2009 in order to discuss future action (ibid.: 125). This meeting, however, never happened, as the state entities gave in to the pressure exercised by the Corocoro labour unions against the planned consultation. In the following months, COMIBOL repeatedly tried to delegitimize the Ayllu organization by referring to its alleged instrumentalization by opposition forces. This sequence of events led eventually to the Corocoro case being presented by CONAMAQ on 28 October 2010 to the InterAmerican Commission of Human Rights. In the following, we will briefly describe two consultation procedures on hydrocarbon activities: the contested and partly deficient Lliquimuni case from the north of La Paz and the Charagua Norte 133

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Prior consultations in practice

case from Tarija, which is one of the very few documented cases that became known as a ‘good practice’ example. The Lliquimuni block is a non-traditional hydrocarbon area in the north of La Paz and of strat­ egic interest for the Bolivian government, as the Bolivian–Venezuelan consortium YPFB PETROANDINA SAM is in charge of the operations. Among the affected communities are indigenous Mosetén and Leco peoples and settler communities that migrated into this area more recently. As in many other places in Bolivia, social conflicts between these two groups over land, natural resources and decision-making power are acute. The government first carried out a short, deficient and superficial prior consultation with settler communities supportive of the government, which resulted in a signed agreement (ibid.: 67). The prior consultation with the indigenous peoples lasted longer and was more contentious. Not only were the EIAs incomplete, but not all affected communities were consulted, and representatives of the government and the hydrocarbon company held negotiations several times with individual members of the local indigenous communities. Further, the umbrella organization of the Mosetén and Leco peoples was excluded from the deliberative procedure, according to the government because it lacked legitimacy within local populations (see CEADL 2010: 28–31; Martínez Crespo 2011: 128). In the San Isidro (Santa Cruz) block, the exploration of the Tacobo and Tajibo fields was carried out by YPFB and Pluspetrol. This area is traditional for hydrocarbon activities and the local Guaraní population already had relevant experience and had acquired skills, which proved to be crucial for shaping the consultation procedure. In December 2009 the responsible state entities organized meetings with the authorities of the affected communities and, as usual, they started implementing a deficient prior consultation. The underlying EIAs were incomplete and far too general, the local community members were not well informed, the process was not transparent, the dialogue was not carried out in a socially and culturally adequate manner and the regional organization APG (Asamblea del Pueblo Guaraní) was excluded (Bascopé Sanjinés 2010: 159ff.). But in this case, the Guaraní organizations took a leading role in the consultation procedure. They elaborated a new agenda for the procedure, demanded that the regional and local authorities as well as all community members be well informed about the process, carried out new field inspections jointly with state representatives to complement the deficient EIAs, and ensured the support of experts and consultants during the process (ibid.). The government and the corporation gave in and an agreement was reached, resulting in changes 134

Peru  Sixteen years after ILO C169 came into force, the rights of indigenous people have neither been satisfactorily incorporated into national legislation nor implemented in practice in Peru. In the past few years prior consultations on mining and hydrocarbon activities in Peru have been absent or were reduced to mere informative events (talleres informativos), causing discontent and serious social and socioenvironmental conflicts between the state and local communities, as well as within local populations (see Gamboa 2010; DPLF 2010, 2011; Luyo Lucero 2007). Owing to the absence of their right to participate in decisions affec­ting their development, in 2002 agricultural communities of the Tambogrande Valley held a self-organized referendum about the Manhattan Minerals Mining project in their territory. With a voter turnout of 78 per cent of all eligible voters, 98 per cent voted against the mining project, which was subsequently cancelled. This symbolic protest activity inspired other communities in Peru and elsewhere (for example, Guatemala) (Fulmer 2010), with local communities from Ayacaba, Huancabamba, and Carmen de la Frontera also holding a self-organized prior consultation in 2007 with, again, more than 90 per cent of the population voting against the planned Rio Blanco mining project (Bebbington and Williams 2008; Hoetmer 2009). The resistance of the local population and the submission of a legal claim against the company because of alleged human rights violations (torture and kidnapping) again led to the abandonment of the project. A later example related to the absence of prior consultations was the violent protest of Aymara communities from Juliaca in the province of Puno in June 2011, against the Canadian mining company Bear Creek at the Santa Ana Mine, which caused six deaths. Mobilized local community members demanded the provision of reliable EIAs and meaningful consultation. The government finally gave in and decided to organize a consultation procedure before approving new concessions in Puno (DS no. 083-2007).13 The incidences in Puno occurred exactly two years after the ‘­Baguazo’, 135

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to the project as originally proposed, including the translocation of seismic lines in order to protect water resources, the restriction of water use by the corporation to one specific well and the implementation of more rigorous monitoring programmes such as a transparent early-warning system. With regard to monetary compensation, the APG initially demanded $580,000 but finally accepted the offer of $100,000 (ibid.: 238), with the fund being administered by the APG.

which took place in Bagua in Amazonas province on 5 June 2009, when originally peaceful indigenous protests turned into one of the most tragic moments in Peru’s recent past. Thousands of in­digenous and non-indigenous persons and organizations blockaded streets for several weeks to reassert their demands for real decision-making power over planned extractive projects, which directly affected their livelihood. Special forces from the national police repressed the protest, wounding and assassinating several protesters and, in response, twenty-three policemen were killed by protesters. The roots of this conflict had a longer history, going back to the imposition (without consultation) of dozens of legislative decrees by President García in 2008 in order to accelerate the implementation of the free trade agreement (FTA) with the USA, which was signed in 2007. Many of these decrees directly affected indigenous rights over lands and resources. In the hydrocarbon sector in the past few years only informative events on planned projects have been carried out, but no meaningful consultations. On top of these very unequal procedures, the local communities had access neither to relevant information about the planned project nor to professional consultancy. For example, Repsol YPF did not implement meaningful consultations in the fields where the corporation is working (Blocks 109, 57 and 90) and which are super­ imposed on territories of the Machiguenga, Ashaninka and Awajún peoples (Luyo Lucero 2007). The corporation generally held only one meeting in which it presented information about the planned project in a technical way that was not understandable to the great majority of the local inhabitants, in order to obtain the ‘social licence’ from the local communities (ibid.). After these specific events, the communities were informed neither about whether their observations had been incorporated into the documents on the assessment of the expected environmental and social impacts, nor on whether the results of the consultations were taken into account by the responsible state entities and corporations. Final reflections: unresolved tensions between self-determined development and ‘national interests’

The extractivist orientation of the Bolivian and Peruvian economic models constrains the possibility of indigenous and peasant commun­ ities having meaningful participation in decisions that affect them and shape their own development. Global and international influences play a central role in shaping these processes at the national and ­local ­levels. International human rights law and its advocates generally 136

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support and legitimize the claims of indigenous peoples and local communities to self-determined development, while the global commodity price boom and the international trade and economic system enhance the strategic economic interests of the state. Kirby and Cannon’s (this volume) assumptions that globalization is restricting the room for manoeuvre open to states but that it does not necessarily lead to the demise of the state, but rather to its transformation under the pressures, opportunities and constraints in a given context of transnational interconnectedness, hold true for the cases analysed in this chapter. In ‘pink-tide’ Bolivia, public enterprises have been strengthened in the past few years, but this has not resolved existing tensions and contradictions between the predominant development visions furthered by the state and by local communities. The governmental vision is more state-centred, its focus on the creation of state revenues by massive resource exploitation, thereby financing an ample state apparatus and extended social policies; the critical indigenous organizations by contrast strive to improve their autonomy and decision-making power in the supposedly plurinational state and to create new productive structures at the local level in order to diversify the economy and to enhance their self-determined development. In Bolivia and Peru we can observe the common trend that state governments prioritize strategic economic interests and so-called ‘­national interests’ over livelihood issues and local conceptions of selfdetermined development, thereby reducing the real decision-making power of affected communities. Thus, the emergence of strong publics, according to Fraser (1993) and Howell and Pearce (2001: 7ff.), in Peru and Bolivia’s resource governance has been severely constrained as civil society’s opinions generally have either not been heard or not considered, and ‘alternative imaginations of economic and social relations’ (ibid.: 8) tend to be overriden by governmental priorities. In both countries, the excessive power of the executive and its bypassing of environmental and human rights law when releasing supreme decrees and implementing policies limit the democratization of resource governance. The states are blocked in their supposed mediating role between corporation and community interests, as they generally act as judge and interested party. In Peru, García’s government was perceived as allied with and influenced by transnational and national corporations, and in Bolivia enhanced public enterprises are backed by the government. In the discourses of Morales’s and García’s governments, voices critical of their economic models have frequently been delegitimized and marginalized.

Nevertheless, we found that the Bolivian government has generally been more open to negotiating and communicating with indigenous and peasant communities and to tolerating social protests. The García government in Peru was reluctant to recognize indigenous and peasant organizations as legitimate interlocutors, thereby significantly reducing their decision-making power in state politics. Under President García repression was the usual answer to local protests, frequently leading to violent conflicts between security forces and mobilized indigenous and peasant communities. As we observed in Piura, Puno and Bagua, while violent state interventions impaired the indigenous and peasants movements, their presentation as victims of state brutality helped to make their claims visible and to gain sympathy from national and international media and other parts of civil society. In comparison, the Bolivian government holds corporativist relations with organized civil society and favours organizations supportive of the government over ones more critical of it. This general state–society relationship pattern had distorting impacts on prior consultations: on the one hand the fast approval of projects from co-opted organizations supportive of the government was seen as an expression of their political support; on the other hand objections against planned projects from organizations critical of the government were frequently delegitimized by interpreting them as part of political strategies to weaken the MAS party. Prior consultations open new channels for local communities to express disconformity with state-led development agendas, and hence have the potential to strengthen civil society in its dealings with the state. They lead to the implementation of forums for dialogue and shape public debates over desired development models. In these ­debates – to a greater extent in Bolivia – the compatibility between extractivism and a vivir bien (living well) regime (including harmony between nature and society) has increasingly been questioned. Moreover, as we can see in the Charagua Norte example from Bolivia, meaningful prior consultations can further empower commun­ ities and have the ­potential to lead to substantial changes in planned extractive projects. In Peru, the critique of negative environmental and sociocultural impacts of mining and hydrocarbon activities and the failure to implement prior consultations opened new opportunities for coordinated action and shared claims between diverse indigenous and peasant groups. The reference to the rights of the ILO C169 also seems to go hand in hand with an identity shift for many peasant communities, which increasingly emphasize their indigenous identity (Van Cott 2005: 154; Lucero and García 2007: 247). As the Peruvian 138

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cases showed, even deficient or absent consultation procedures often led to coordinated action and the mobilization of local communities, demanding to have a say in decisions that have an impact on their lives. Despite the democratizing potential of prior consultations, they also bear several inherent risks, which merit more detailed investigation in future research. The first is the general subordination of local needs and interests to so-called ‘national interests’. The problem here is that democracy and majoritarian decisions at state level prove to be insufficient when there are certain decisions that profoundly affect specific social groups. In these cases additional deliberative processes with the respective populations are necessary. Secondly, there are no homogeneous ­local communities with a single voice; rather there is a heterogeneity of diverse local actors, not only with different development visions, values and interests, but also with distinct political and economic power positions. In this context, the challenge is not only to identify the representative and legitimate local and regional organizations, but to consider the plurality of voices and reduce existing power asymmetries between and within local, national and international actors by providing for equal deliberations. Thirdly, the linking of financial and livelihood issues in consultation procedures should be reconsidered, as it produces adverse effects in terms of environmental and human rights protection by opening possibilities for questionable titfor-tat strategies. This can be risky, as sustainable development paths might be played off (by the state as well as by civil society actors) against short-term economic benefits. Fourthly, the democratization of resource governance requires transparency in the administration of compensation funds and benefits in favour of local community development priorities, on the part not only of state entities, but also of indigenous and other local organizations. The new Consultation Law promulgated by Peru’s left-wing government under President Humala opens new opportunities for democrat­ ization of the country’s resource governance and for local communities to control their own development. Nevertheless, the comparison with left-led Bolivia under President Morales shows that progressive ­legal norms are not enough, as there are many global, national and ­local factors that constrain democratization in resource politics, the ­single  most important one being the dependency on global markets and the persisting extractivist economic orientation of these Andean states.

Notes 1  In Peru, according to the ­ mbudsman’s report of social o conflicts, no. 88 of June 2011, in that month 139 active conflicts existed, 91 (65.5 per cent) of which were classified as socio-environmental conflicts, the great majority of these being mining conflicts. 2  Among them, proportionally large indigenous populations of 62 per cent in Bolivia, according to the last census from 2001 (see www.ine. gob.bo, accessed 20 August 2011), and in Peru many social scientists estimate that the indigenous population would add up to 33–47 per cent (Van Cott 2005: 141) or roughly 40 per cent of the total population (Lucero and García 2007: 234); both share the history and culture of the central Andes (Van Cott 2005: 140); the economies of both countries are dependent on non-renewable resource extraction, and this has increased over recent years; and the degree of social inequality is similar, Bolivia having a Gini coefficient of 572 and Peru of 505 (see hdrstats. undp.org/en/countries/profiles, accessed 30 August 2011). 3  Among them the dispossession of local populations from their l­ivelihoods, the contamination of water resources and lands, de­forestation, the reduction of biodiversity and severe changes in the local ways of life and social organization. 4  Data based on comtrade. un.org/db/, accessed 20 July 2011. 5  Data based on websie.eclac.

cl/sisgen/ConsultaIntegrada.asp, accessed 20 July 2011. 6  The plan points out that the ‘neoliberal model produces inequality, division and backwardness’ (Gana Perú 2010: 18). 7  Similarly, the Bolivian government has promised nothing less than a ‘proceso de cambio’ (change process) to ‘refound the state’. 8  www.economist.com/node/ 21528286, accessed 3 September 2011. 9  El Comercio, 24 August 2011. 10  YPFB president Carlos Villegas recently stated that: ‘The issue of environmental permits and consultation and participation has become an obstacle [to investment]’, and that: ‘This year we want to undo these obstacles’ (see fobomade.org. bo, accessed 18 June 2010, and www. cedla.org, accessed 3 October 2010). 11  Among them the two Supreme Decrees (SDs) from 2008 that regulated prior consultations in the mining and hydrocarbon sectors (SD no. 028-2008-EM and SD no. 012-2008EM) and the new regulating norm SD no. 23-2011-EM from 2011 from the Ministry of Energy and Mines ‘for the implementation of the indigenous peoples’ right to consultation on mining and energy-related activities’. 12  See www.hidrocarburos.gob. bo/sitio/index.php?option=com_ content&view=article&id=938, accessed 30 August 2011. 13  See ‘Pronunciamiento de CONACAMI sobre hechos en ­Juliaca’, www.conacami.org, accessed 30 ­August 2011.

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10 | Chile’s mining unions and the ‘new left’, 1990–2010 J ewellord T. N em S ingh

A fundamental issue is if there is compliance with the law. We are practically selling copper with blood  (El Mostrador, 2010)

The above observation was not made to describe working conditions in Chilean mining camps in the nineteenth or twentieth centuries, though it might well have been. Instead, it was a comment made by Gerardo Nuñez, president of the mining union in Candelaria Norte, just after the mining accident in August 2010 that trapped thirty-three copper miners for seventy days underground in the San José mine. Despite an earlier accident in July, the regional office in Copiapo responsible for mine inspection issued a new licence to operate to the San Esteban Mining Company after concluding that the private firm had adhered to strict regulations on environmental, safety and occupational health standards. The underground mine collapsed less than a month after operations resumed. As investigations unfolded in the Chilean National Congress, mine owners Alejandro Bohn and Marcelo Kemeny could not explain what had gone wrong, and the ­officer in charge of issuing the licence, Raúl Martínez Guzmán, resigned from his post. One year after the accident, thirty-one of the miners have sought justice by filing a lawsuit against the Chilean state (and not the mining firm) for its failure to carry out proper inspections of the mine’s safety and working conditions. The Chilean government has constantly and iteratively applied minimal standards, the miners argue, which makes it hardly surprising that two further deaths were incurred in 2005 and 2007, even before this tragedy came to pass.1 After many years of silence, workers in the private sector are now calling on the state to guarantee labour rights. While workers have always paid the price of Chile’s economic miracle, a more assertive civil society is now emer­ ging in which ordinary people are rejecting the entrenched neoliberal political economy that has sustained thus far Chile’s successful entry into the ranks of the developed world. Put simply, the politics of copper entails not just the economic role 141

of the state but also how political elites deal with the ‘labour question’, intrinsically referring to organized workers mobilizing in defence of their rights, albeit in very difficult circumstances. Historically, labour unions have sought to articulate citizenship rights, expand mechanisms of participation, and compel the political classes to recognize their existence and collective interests. In the context of globalization, the extent to which the state guarantees workers’ rights is indicative of the strength of labour as an actor in civil society, the state’s cap­acity to channel potentially destabilizing conflicts through institutional politics, and the overall consolidation of democracy. As Cook (2007: 2–3) aptly puts it, labour laws are not just about adjusting to the global market but also span the arenas of rights and citizenship. They ­affect recognized human rights of association and the representative organ­ izations of workers – the unions – and the contestation around ­making democracy more inclusive and adhering to social justice claims. While a plethora of new actors have emerged in the last two decades to contest marketized governance across Latin America (Silva 2009), it is the workers’ movement in Chile which has played a crucial role in challenging the state, though sometimes negotiating with it, to implement reforms to restore collective rights. Inevitably, the ways in which Chilean miners – both in privately and publicly owned mines – reconstitute their political relationship with the state are shaped by legacies of the past, with the embedded political economy, institutional dynamics and conflicts along social class cleavages simultaneously opening and unmaking opportunities for citizenship rights to be expressed in political debates. Political choices for democratization, in other words, are path dependent (Grugel 2002: 10). The assessment of labour unions’ impacts on democratization in this chapter takes a historical institutionalist approach – an emphasis on the role of political legacies, contingency and the changing constellation of power among actors – to analyse the success and limitations of labour mobilization by mining workers in contemporary Chile.2 After the transition to democracy in 1990, copper governance under La Concertación por la Democracia governments (henceforth Concertación) has been marked by political continuities with marginal changes from neoliberalism. The dictatorship’s main legacy to Concertación governance was to create a double bind between state and labour: on the one hand, state control over copper has meant that Chile has not moved beyond dependency on primary commodities through export-led growth, nor could the state completely depoliticize its management of the most strategic natural resources; on the other 142

State–labour relations before Chile’s democratic transition

In January 1966, under Eduardo Frei Montalva’s chileanisación del cobre, Congress approved Law 16.425 allowing 51 per cent state control of the large-scale copper mines. But rather than solving labour conflicts, this caused social divisions to deepen, and as Allende rose to power, nationalization took place through a cross-party agreement transferring complete ownership of the old mines – El Salvador, El Teniente, Andina and Chuquicamata, also known as La Gran Minería – to the state without any form of compensation to foreign companies. The socialist government was replaced by the Pinochet regime, which 143

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hand, the costs of neoliberalism borne by workers and communities meant fragile and incoherent labour arrangements to manage the tensions between employers and workers. While democracy and development are not inherently incompatible, the formidable task of delivering both requires a trade-off, and the road to achieving them is full of obstacles, unintended consequences and failures. This chapter assesses the extent to which the political project of the new left has delivered growth and democracy, to achieve more substantive rights for workers and a repoliticization of copper govern­ ance.3 Here, we need to clarify the marked differences in state–labour relations between public and private copper firms. While a paternalistic kind of labour management emerged between managers and ­workers in modernizing the state-owned Corporación Nacional del Cobre (CODELCO), disputes over labour conditions in the private sector have been combative. After decades of economic restructuring, organized labour has looked to the state to tame the excessively profit-driven motives of mining firms. As the location of workers makes apparent the differences in worker autonomy, levels of exploitation and mobilizational capacity, two common themes can be discerned as regards the democratization project of the new left in Chile: first, the attempts of labour unions to repoliticize copper governance in a new environment characterized by very fragile political ties with the political classes, most notably Concertación governments; and secondly, the need for state elites to adapt to the highly technocratic style of decision-making that has been accentuated by the depoliticization of economic management prevalent in neoliberal governance (Nem Singh 2010; Silva 2008). In sum, these issues reveal the complexity of the world of labour and open debates about the extent to which democratization has been consolidated in the region, as reflected in Latin American state–civil society relations under the new left.

aimed not only at creating a new economic project but also at a social re-engineering of society. Central to this was demobilizing labour, which was seen as increasingly linked to communist forces and hence a threat to social order (Vergara 1985). Kurtz (2001) explains that the Chilean state reoriented economic production by withdrawing from direct management, allowing the collapse of existing industries like textiles and traditional agriculture and aligning Chile’s investment policy towards natural resources, in which it has comparative advantages. The state played a neutral role as regulator, implementing the law to allow market forces to decide on production and maintaining a ‘liberal neutrality’ in its import and export regimes. Unlike other Latin American countries, which failed to fully implement market reforms, Chile achieved completion of both phases. The ‘first-stage’ reform, which occurred between 1975 and 1979, aimed at trade and foreign investment liberalization, control of inflation and denationalization of the industrial sector. The ‘second-stage’ reform, which was an immediate response to the 1982 debt crisis, constituted what is known as ‘pragmatic neoliberalism’. This included reforms of labour legislation, privatization of ‘complex’ industries, and building export promotion capacities (Grugel and Riggirozzi 2009; Naím 1994; Taylor 2006; Teichman 2001). While market reforms in Latin America transpired after the democratic transition, signifying at least the use of nominal democratic procedures, it was a very repressive authoritarian regime in Chile which imposed the initial radical reforms. Tellingly, ­social protests erupted between 1983 and 1984 as economic, political and social exclusion grew markedly after years of radical market reforms and closed authoritarian rule. Despite contentious political actions, the model survived in the face of economic collapse, political unrest, disaffection from the private sector, criticisms from the military, and the demise of strong adherents, most notably big business, known as grupos económicos. For González (2008), the high degree of political control of the authoritarian regime over free market restructuring is the key explanation for the successful completion of neoliberal reforms. He calls this the institutionalization of authoritarianism, referring to the resilience of Pinochet’s regime in controlling both economic and political transitions. Silva (1996) echoes this, arguing that the capacity of the state to incorporate a wider spectrum of entrepreneurial interests was the key to the continuity of neoliberalism through tumultuous times. For Teichman (2001), it is the combination of a coherent radical policy network and personalistic ties and support from the World Bank and the IMF which allowed the completion of reforms. 144

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Chile’s political economy, however, was shaped largely by copper mining, and its export-oriented transformation was the watershed politically, socially and economically in terms of how conflicts were structured by the state. It was the Chilean insertion into the world capitalist system through primary export commodities after 1880 which moulded political conflicts over the relationship between the state, organized labour and foreign capital (Bergquist 1986). Yet while the dictatorship was a critical juncture in reorienting the role of the state, mining policy under Pinochet reflected the politicized nature of mineral extraction. He did allow private actors to enter the Chilean copper market, as specified in the Foreign Investment Statute (DL 600), and instituted respect for private property rights in the 1983 Mining Code, but he stymied the privatization of CODELCO. Instead, the state relied on the firm’s delivery of copper profits for its day-to-day affairs and Pinochet politicized its corporate governance by apportioning the management of the firm to military generals. As Vergara (1985) exposes, copper mining was central to the national security doctrine of the armed forces, and therefore its governance was left under state power. This historical puzzle – the extensive privatization of the economy apart from CODELCO – can be traced back to the conflicting reality of Chile’s economic dependency on copper and the need for the state to address the highly disruptive labour movement. In these circumstances, labour conflicts were dealt with through state-sponsored repression and social demobilization. Where the state failed to command public acquiescence, a new labour code relegitimizing unions began to function, although Jose Piñera’s Plan Laboral scarcely constituted substantive rights for workers. For example, the labour code contained obligatory adjustment of salaries according to inflation and a minimum salary offer in collective bargaining equivalent to the salary of the previous year. Following the 1982 debt crisis, which resulted in declining production, falling wages and rising unemployment (Alexander 2009: 5–7; Teichman 2001), social protests led by mining unions and trade confederations erupted between 1983 and 1984. With the economy back on track in 1985 and the plebiscite coming shortly, political parties reconstituted themselves with a strategy of defeating the dictatorship on its own terms (Garretón 2003). Political mobilization against the military regime first appeared in the world of labour among the mining union leaders, whose lives were in constant threat from the military. Pinochet’s bid for another seven years in office was defeated in the 1988 plebiscite and Concertación won the presidential elections with the centrist leader Patricio Aylwin taking

power in 1990. With democratization came the promise of rebuilding the trust between the state and labour unions, which had broken down during the dictatorship. Managing resources and organized labour under Concertación governments

The new left embraced the existing model of resource governance, and the attendant state strategy of managing labour conflicts guided by the logic of competitiveness and labour flexibilization. At the core of the model is the Concertación’s belief in the need to project Chile as an investor-friendly country with political and tax stability as its comparative advantage vis-à-vis other mining countries. Advocates of this strategy within the coalition point to the linkage between guaranteeing the private property rights of companies and maintaining the low taxation policy in mining as a means of attracting large-scale foreign capital, thus adhering to the economic logic of competition and private sector efficiency. To the credit of the Concertación, the state has successfully brought in mining investment, particularly in a period when copper prices were low and foreign firms had numerous options among resource-rich countries. As Figure 10.1 shows, the combined total of private mining investment in Chile has overtaken CODELCO’s control over copper mining. Tellingly, the state under the new left placed competitiveness and productivism at the heart of its growth strategy, not just in mining but across all sectors in the economy. It has been the guiding principle behind Chile’s national

kMT copper content

6,000

Total

5,000 4,000 3,000 2,000

CODELCO

1,000 0

1992

1994

1996

1998

2000 2002

2004 2006

2008

2010

10.1  Comparison of Chilean copper production between public and private firms, 1989–2008 (source: COCHILCO 2009) 146

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innovation and competitiveness policy, and this was exemplified in public financing of private initiatives to make Chilean export goods more competitive internationally (CNIC 2010). In the early 1990s a neoliberal logic was the main thrust of moves to reform CODELCO, which was increasingly viewed by the right as failing to respond to global market integration. Pro-market reformers within the Concertación blamed the company for its declining production and inefficiencies, depicting CODELCO as a typical state enterprise requiring retrenchment. However, no move towards privatization took place. While retaining 100 per cent ownership was an imperative for the Concertación to retain popular appeal, state managers were pressured to reform the company’s management. Full capital ownership by the state means that investment decisions, labour conflicts and corporate governance (specifically appointments to the board of directors) are all decided or resolved by the state, notably the president and the Ministry of Finance. For their part, the workers were enticed by the co-optation strategies of CODELCO in its attempt to ‘modernize’. This implied closing mines, laying off workers and further outsourcing of services. In exchange, the union negotiating in collective bargaining agreements with CODELCO, the Federación de los Trabajadores del Cobre (FTC), accepted the strategy of ‘democratizing corporate governance’ through a series of agreements detailing the goals, compromises from unions and management and specific targets to improve productivity and efficiency. Known as the Alianza Estratégica, it was introduced in 1994 in the context of the perceived loss of CODELCO’s competitiveness, and scepticism as to the state’s capacity to achieve its goal of making it the best copper firm in the world (Villarzu 2005). There were two major phases to the programme. Phase I (1994–99) aimed at restoring competitiveness, profitability and credibility by reducing the costs of extraction to less than ten centavos/pound, boosting production by 500,000 tonnes and enhancing productivity by 50 per cent. Phase II (1999–2006) sought to maximize the economic value of the company workers and the transfer of profits (dividends) to the state through the so-called ‘common project of the firm’. In practice, this means doubling its economic value and increasing the surplus production of CODELCO. The modernization of CODELCO required stable relations between management and workers. According to Villarzu (ibid.: 10–12), the index of conflictivity as a measure of the success of the programme waned from 3.3 between 1990 and 1993 to 1.4 between 1994 and 2005. Since 1993 there has also been a decline, in absolute terms, in the frequency of accidents, which signifies improving standards of health and safety

measures. Equally, those with permanent contracts (called trabajadores de planta) have successfully won generous benefits, while bonuses were paid to reduce conflicts and avoid work stoppages. However, because subcontracting became the dominant practice both for CODELCO and private firms to respond to demands for cost effectiveness and production efficiency, new categories of workers have been formed (called trabajadores contratistas), whose salaries, benefits and general working conditions are substandard compared to those of plant workers. As shown by the absence of any major strike in the last twenty years in CODELCO, this strategy has succeeded in taming the militancy of organized labour in the industry. On the other hand, firm–worker relations in private mining are characterized by ephemeral tranquillity and permanent friction, as exemplified by the frequency of ­workers’ strikes (compared to the number occurring in CODELCO). This situ­ ation reflects the broader pattern of historical conflicts between foreign firms and mining workers in Chilean mining communities, which consolidated the political identity of workers in the formation of unions and the mobilization of miners and peasants against political classes (Klubock 1998; Petras and Zeitlin 1967; Vergara 2008). The Concertación’s economic strategy of growth with equity, which is at the core of contemporary debates on ‘post-neoliberalism’ in Latin America, cannot simply be evaluated in terms of whether it has worked; in equal measure, the question is whether it has been acceptable to those who placed the new left in power in the hope of reversing the consequences of the free market model. Labour unions, which entered into a tripartite pact with the state and big business and supported the coalition for twenty years, are central in this assessment. The view of unions on changes in the labour code under President Patricio Aylwin (1990–94) is that they have been minimal in substance; in fact, it was not until 2001, during the third term of Concertación government under Ricardo Lagos (2001–06), that labour reforms would be discussed again in Congress (Frank 2004, 2002; Winn 2004). In the words of the representative of the Central Única de los Trabajadores del Chile (CUT), Lariza Palma, as regards the early phase of labour reforms: We sought for greater unionization, union freedom, the creation of new collective bargaining arrangements, the right to strike, and the right not to be laid off – however, there is little advancement in labour rights. While there was negotiation of, and improvement in, minimum salaries, allowances and remunerations were abolished, and companies have minimally complied with the law.4 148

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This weak position of unions in terms of influencing labour reforms is documented in many studies (Cook 2007; Frank 2002; Winn 2004). The initial commitment to further labour reforms was strong under Eduardo Frei, but this was watered down. For example, the first move to impose a royalty tax in 1995 did not even reach the main sessions of Congress. Any attempt to increase state responsibility either in copper management or in labour rights waned as the state championed a depoliticized governance model whereby market forces decide on copper policy and labour relations. By definition, depoliticization takes the politics out of economic decisions on the grounds that such choices are rational par excellence. By emphasizing the need for growth, the state partially abrogates its responsibilities to monitor the ‘externalities’ of this strategy, which include looser environmental standards, low taxes (and resistance to imposing additional royalty taxes) and the commodification of water rights, all in the name of foreign investment. Such an approach is lent legitimacy by the approval of organized business, whose role in politics has been widened, as shown in pacted democratic transitions and the crafting of policy reforms aimed at greater market openness (Panizza 2009; Schneider 2004; Silva 1996). This has been exemplified quite clearly in mining policy, as shown by the fierce opposition to the royalty tax in congressional debates and the mass media by the umbrella organization of large-scale copper firms, the Consejo Minero, and the national association of Chilean miners, the Sociedad ­Nacional de Minería (SONAMI) – the twin associations representing private interests in the copper sector (see Nem Singh 2010). The key question to be asked about the role of the state in postdictatorial Chile is whether this will continue to produce stable growth. Social policies, anti-poverty programmes and financing to diversify industrial projects all depend on the capacity of the state to deliver sustainable economic growth. Here, the approaches of the centre-led and left-led Concertación governments can be distinguished. While Aylwin and Frei prioritized maintaining growth and political stability over directly confronting inequality and labour rights, the second decade under the renovated left was more progressive in terms of addressing social inequality and citizenship rights. Ricardo Lagos, during his term in office, swiftly tackled the labour reform programme and introduced in his final year the royalty tax law. Under Bachelet, whose popularity was based on the fact that she was an outsider to Concertación party traditions, gender was placed in the mainstream of politics. This was emblematic even in mining, when she emphasized

her preference for women to gain better working conditions in the new mining camps, such as CODELCO’s Minera Gaby. In 2009, Chile signed and ratified ILO 169, which recognizes the cultural rights of indigenous communities over ancestral territories, with which, together with the Indigenous People’s Act (Law 19.223), Bachelet reaffirmed her commitment to the formidable task of balancing economic objectives with citizenship rights. However, the discourse of social rights is easier to put on paper than realize in practice. In the case of indigenous communities in mining regions in northern Chile, for example, the state follows a contradictory policy of acceding to business preferences by allowing firms to buy water rights at the expense of the rights of indigenous peoples. As indigenous leader Roberto Salinas argues: The DGA [Dirección del Agua] sold more water than what exists here, and these days it is affecting [us] because it has scarcely rained and there are many mining [projects] … when copper prices go up, the consumption of water is excessive … the implementation of ILO 169 here will work if the state takes responsibility to educate its different departments. In this region, you are going to CONAF or INDAP, the public services, they are unaware of this, they do not know about ILO 169 … The state has the duty to send people into [training] courses, to master and study it.5

When the state is unable to balance economic objectives and democratic responsibilities, the outcomes are deliberate strategies of maintaining growth and stability. This is evident in the debate on royalty taxes, labour rights and participation and consultation of affected communities in mining regions. If the state cannot deliver both, then economic growth takes precedence. To sum up, the state of democracy and development in Chile under the Concertación has been characterized by the slow recovery of labour rights, the prevalence of depoliticized economic management, and the commodification of natural resources. Tensions between state and labour under the right-wing government

Globalization has created a double bind between the state and the labour movement in negotiating labour conflicts. On the one hand, a constant struggle persists between attempts to maintain labour flexibility as the core strategy of competitiveness, and pressures from unions to protect wages and social welfare. As complex privatization deepened under Concertación governments in the 1990s, collective negotiations 150

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failed to undo the pro-employer labour code, under which the patrones (employers) have a ‘mountain of faculties to negotiate whilst workers possess no means to confront them’.6 On the other hand, within the Concertación, there exist contradictory interests. It was not only the right-wing parties which resisted the bills in Congress to redress labour flexibility but also senators allied with the business sector within the Concertación coalition. While labour unions have no choice but to work with labour-friendly parties within the Concertación, it is certainly the case that the governing coalition sought to expand its appeal to an increasingly depoliticized public (Silva 2004, 2008). After twenty years of social pacts between the state, big business and organized labour, the latter’s views of labour reforms and efforts towards expanding citizenship rights have been negative. CUT national secretary Esteban Maturana claims, ‘With respect to the major pillars that built their programmes, inspired by democracy [to achieve] more social justice, greater equity … in these three categories, Concertación governments delivered [in] the debit, negative figures, leaving a balance in the red’ (Palma 2010). In these circumstances, the victory of the right-wing coalition Alianza in the 2010 elections should not have come as a surprise. The combination of a weakening labour movement, public apathy, loss of credibility of the left, the lack of any political alternative to remedy the parochial party system of Chile, and the seemingly popular appeal of Sebastian Piñera as candidate for president weakened the consensus on new left governance (Angell 2010). Furthermore, voting trends for all four Concertación presidents in the two principal mining regions (Antofagasta and Atacama) in Figure 10.2 show that the gap between the right and the left has gradually narrowed, and these are regions where the left has traditionally had a strong support base. Interviews show that the collapse of labour support for the Concertación hinges on the failure to deliver greater collective rights, giving access to labour unions in policy-making, and introducing more social protection schemes for the popular classes. Nevertheless, Piñera’s appeal emanated from his populist image as a reformist who would bring reforms to revitalize the economy. After less than two years in office, Piñera faced the gravest challenges. The first was the demand for the state to provide financing for the educational system, which was privatized as part of the withdrawal of the state from welfare functions. In July 2011, more than 100,000 secondary school and university students took over the streets of Santiago to demand equal and free access to education and the ending of the

National 80

Per cent

60 40 20 0 1989

1993

1999

2005

2009

1999

2005

2009

1999

2005

2009

Antofagasta (Region 2) 80

Per cent

60 40 20 0 1989

1993

Atacama (Region 3) 80

Per cent

60 40 20 0 1989 Concertación

1993

Alianza

10.2  Voting trends in presidential elections in major mining regions, 1989–2005 (source: Ministerio del Interior, Gobierno de Chile) Note: The electoral system changed prior to the 1999 presidential elections with the introduction of a two-round voting system. The results are those of the second-round voting.

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decentralized system of financing and a return to public ownership of tertiary education. The national protest, joined by the miners’ strike in CODELCO on 11 July and in Minera Escondida in El Teniente on 22 July, constituted the most visible popular mobilization of labour since the Allende days.7 With Piñera still refusing to heed calls for ‘more state’ in the education sector, it remains to be seen what kind of reforms he will introduce (see Farje 2011). The second issue relates to the strikes in the copper industry by both permanent and subcontracted workers in public and private mining firms. This is likewise unprecedented, as permanent workers in CODELCO, represented by the FTC, have conventionally acceded to management decisions in the name of the Strategic Alliance. On the fortieth anniversary of the nationalization of copper, the union leadership decided to go on strike, the first major collective action in the last two decades. The twenty-four-hour stoppage of 15,000 plant and 30,000 subcontracted workers paralysed CODELCO, leading to a loss of $41 million. The planned modernization of CODELCO, which was interpreted as steps towards the privatization of the company, was at the core of this historic protest. Despite claims by Minister of Mines and Energy Laurence Golborne that the strike was illegal and that the state was ‘strengthening CODELCO through its investment programme’, the union leadership has promised to continue fighting any moves by the right-wing government to privatize the firm (El Mostrador 2011). What is notable is that the strike was preceded by the rejection by the FTC of the renewal of the Alianza Estratégica following the breakdown of collective negotiations in early 2010. In the private sector, the state is increasingly being pressured to defend workplace demands and expand institutional channels to guarantee labour rights. Prior to the lawsuit brought by the San José miners, there were two major labour reforms passed in Congress to regulate labour flexibilization that began with Ricardo Lagos in 2001 and continued with Michelle Bachelet, mainly the Subcontracting Law in 2007. The driving forces have been the mounting pressures from labour unions as well as international trade agreements (most notably NAFTA) to make the economic agenda more ‘labour friendly’.8 The crucial factor is clearly the role of domestic social forces (labour) in reshaping state–society relations in favour of more inclusive democratic arrangements. Put simply, despite the imposition of neoliberalism in Chile, there exists agency in a highly institutionalized policy context. The precedent is the major strike in 2006 (after years of relative labour stability in the 1990s) that halted production in the biggest (foreign) firm, Minera Escondida. In October 2009, the company ­offered

­ enerous benefits and bonuses to the workers, fearing a repeat of the g strike (Vial 2009). The decision to strike in July 2011, according to the unions, was a difficult one but was justified by the unwillingness of the firm to honour the agreement of October 2009. Since the decision to reject collective bargaining agreements was always a difficult choice, because the labour law still accords the right to fire workers on strike, the current contentious political actions are indicative of the stronger calls for state regulation to go beyond minimal com­ pliance with the law. More crucially, unlike the 2006 strike, the 2011 decision, preceded by the breakdown of the Alianza Estratégica and a twenty-four-hour strike in CODELCO, was also supported by the FTC and by subcontracted workers. Greater labour coherence and stronger inter-union linkages now appear to be emerging – key elements for a more active labour movement that dissipated under Pinochet and the Concertación governments. Tensions between the state and labour unions, signified to a greater extent by the strike in CODELCO and to a lesser degree by the actions of the workers in the biggest private mining firm in Chile, are recurring. The fact that Chile’s industrial relations in mining are considered to be among the best in the world highlights the contradictions behind the strategy of the state (under Piñera) to manage labour conflicts. And while the strikes have not matched the degree of paralysis achieved in the Allende days, they are equally significant insofar as the presumed weakness and demobilization of labour are concerned. The strikes demonstrate quite vividly the historically constituted organizational strength of mining workers; the relevance of the labour movement is underlined by their decision to challenge the neoliberal model and the reforms being introduced by the right. Whether Piñera can modernize the copper sector, especially CODELCO, without resorting to complete marginalization of unions will be very critical in terms of the future of industrial labour relations. Labour management will remain the most important challenge for CODELCO’s corporate governance.9 Without a sound relationship between the state enterprise and its workers, persistent tensions may escalate. In the private sector, the state needs to respond to the breakdown of labour stability and recalibrate, once again, the balance of rights and growth in order to maintain Chile’s competitive position internationally. Overall, in the last five years debates about resource ownership, labour regulations and excessive freedoms of private capital in the mining sector have been repoliticized. Unions have reintroduced not only the ‘labour question’ but also the issue of the redistributive consequences of neoliberalism. 154

80 Mar 1998

Per cent

60

Oct 2007 May 2011

40

20

0 Unions are obsolete

Unions are not obsolete

No response/ opinion

10.3  Legitimacy of Chilean unions (source: CERC, Barómetro, 1998, 2007, 2011. Graph was reproduced from CERC, Barómetro de la Política, May/June 2011.) Note: In the opinion poll, the question asked was ‘Which of the two positions comes closest to your opinion?’ The options were: (a) Unions are obsolete; (b) ­Unions are necessary. 155

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Who benefits from the export-led growth strategy? Does economic development necessarily lead to inclusive politics? These wider social questions, which were banished under the repressive Pinochet regime, are at the heart of the legitimacy of labour unions. If democratization is an ongoing process of managing conflicts among competing interests by state institutions, then a more convin­cing account of Chilean democratization requires paying close attention to the degree of legitimacy of unions in toto. While, in the past, trade unions were repressed, demobilized and depoliticized in the name of national security, the democratic era is marked by greater public acknowledgement of the efficacy of labour mobilization to re­ calibrate the balance between social and political rights and economic growth. Even before the student and labour protests in July and August 2011, public support for more substantive labour rights was reasserting itself. In a recent public opinion survey (Figure 10.3), a positive view of labour is reflected in the nineteen-point jump from 54 per cent to 73 per cent between 2007 and 2011. In the same survey, 66 per cent believed that workers should negotiate collectively via trade unions rather than individually with employers, an increase from 56 per cent in September 2003. It is certainly the case that an active labour movement is again

slowly becoming capable of repoliticizing public debates around labour issues, challenging the academic verdict on Chile as an extremely consumerist and depoliticized society. The student protests and mining strikes are indicative of the growing illegitimacy of the technocratic style of decision-making and the discontent with the neoliberal model of development. But the fact remains that the right-wing coalition in power is likely to resist such pressures, and scepticism endures about the capacity of the Concertación to deliver a fresh kind of democratic politics. This means that the obstacles to participation of the popular classes, most notably the capacity of unions to gain better access to the state apparatus, are – and remain – embedded in a neoliberal policy framework. Conclusions

Has the new left in Chile delivered the promise of participatory democracy and a redefinition of citizenship? By reclaiming ownership of copper and seeking more regulation of the state, the social activism of mining unions indicates modest attempts to rearticulate identity by combining workplace demands for individual safety with broader questions about the role of the state in mining management. This is due to the combination of history, contingency and structured yet strategic political action. The mining accident that put Chile in the global spotlight was an opportunity for the miners to challenge the state by seeking redistributive social justice, on the grounds that officials repeatedly ignored the lack of proper facilities in the mine and, by extension, that the state has failed in its primary responsibility of ensuring that profits do not come at the expense of human lives. In hindsight, the series of incremental policy changes under the Concertación, such as the laws on subcontracting, royalty taxes and corporate restructuring in CODELCO have not yet been enough to deliver both economic growth and democracy. Equally, very little has changed in terms of Chile’s dependence on copper, and consequentially the state’s attempts to manage labour conflicts. In problematizing the ‘labour’ question with specific reference to copper miners, this chapter has explored the complex and messy reality of the world of labour, the implications of neoliberalism with respect to economic governance, and the attempts of Concertación governments to assert greater state control over the economy alongside the consolidation of dependency on primary exports. As to whether we can speak of a post-neoliberal moment in Chile, perhaps it is best to discuss changes within broader patterns of continuities. 156

Notes 1  They are requesting a total of $16.26 million or $540,000 for each miner as compensation; ‘Acogen querella de mineros de la San José contra el Estado’, La Nación, 5 August 2001, www.nacion. cl/noticias/site/artic/20110805/ pags/20110805135222.html#, accessed 12 September 2011. 2  For studies that synthesize historical institutionalism and political economy perspectives as applied to development and democratization in Latin America, see Collier and Collier (2002); Cook (2007); Evans (1995); and Hunter (2010). 3  For a discussion on how Concertación governments managed the contradictions between growth and equity agendas, see Nem Singh (2011, 2010). 4  Lariza Palma, Central Única de los Trabajadores de Chile (CUT) representative, interview with the author, Santiago, Chile, 16 October 2009. 5  Roberto Salinas, Encargado de Recursos Naturales y Defensa Territorial de la Comunidad Indígena Colla de Río Jorquera y Sus

Afluentes, interview with the author, Copiapo, Chile, 9 November 2009. 6  A. Latorre Risso, labour union leader, Sindicato de Empresa de Trabajadores X-Strata Copper Alto Norte, and Pedro Marin, president, Federación Minera Chilena, interviews with the author, Antofagasta, Chile, 4 November 2009. 7  Another mobilization took place in 2008, with 15,000 people rallying in Santiago on a key welfare issue – reproductive rights – when the Tribunal Constitucional wanted to ban the use of emergency contraception. I thank Silke Staab for pointing this out. 8  While this may come as a surprise, extensive labour flexibilization in Chile has raised concerns about its ability to meet international labour standards as part of its bid to enter NAFTA and the OECD. 9  Marcos Lima, CODELCO former CEO, member of the board of directors 2010, interview with the author, Santiago, Chile, 13 November 2009; Nicolas Majluf, CODELCO chairman 2010, interview with the author, Santiago, Chile, 21 October 2009.

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Concertación governments steered the political ship towards more inclusive democracy and sustained economic growth; on balance, its major achievement was to bring about peace and stability in the world of labour; its greatest challenge is to regain the trust of the workers once more as they search for fair, just and democratic labour arrangements in Chile.

11 | Civil society participation: poverty reduction in Bolivia, Honduras and Nicaragua S arah H unt

The Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRS) approach emerged in 1999 as part of the conditionality attached to debt relief under the second heavily indebted poor countries initiative (HIPC II) applied throughout the developing world. An innovative feature of this framework was the focus on generating national ownership of Poverty Reduction Strategies to channel debt relief to the poor, through the participation of civil society in the process. Bolivia, Honduras and Nicaragua were all included in this initiative, and completed national strategies, but the impact of civil society participation on the content in all cases was perceived to be low. Some attempts were made to institutionalize participation in processes around this policy agenda, but by 2006 this PRS approach was perceived to be effectively dead. Explanations for the low influence of civil society on the processes around the PRS focus primarily on how donor involvement undermined the impact of participation, by occupying national political space, disempowering civil society and undermining democracy. But evidence from the experience of participation in the three cases suggests that the poverty agenda and participation failed to take root because of other political dynamics relating to the broader composition of civil society, to political party competition and to patterns of state–society relations under neoliberalism, all of which are pertinent to considerations of civil society–state relationships, both in the emergence of the new left and now in its phase of consolidation. This chapter evaluates the importance of these political factors for explaining the limits to civil society participation in the PRS processes in Bolivia, Honduras and Nicaragua. The Poverty Reduction Strategy approach

By the late 1990s, in the context of structural adjustment programmes, there were growing concerns that external debt was hindering the transformation of economies, and that limited improvements 161

in poverty and social indicators were undermining domestic support for the reform agenda, challenging the viability of the whole neoliberal project (Birdsall and Szekely 2003: 66). In addition, getting developing country governments to focus on poverty issues was perceived to be a problem for aid donors (Booth et al. 2006: 9; Stewart and Wang 2003: 2). The HIPC II initiative sought to tackle these problems by conditioning access to debt relief on the production by the government, with civil society participation, of a nationally owned Poverty Reduction Strategy, to channel debt relief, aid and eventually domestic resources. The PRS approach was influenced by growing evidence to suggest that the involvement of the poor, through civil society organizations, in the design and delivery of aid projects at local level enhanced efficiency objectives, and contributed to democratization, by offering space for participation and empowerment for previously excluded actors (Booth 2005: 4). The PRS approach applied these ideas to national-level policymaking. Participation appealed directly to technocratic concerns of neoliberal institutions with stakeholder analysis, but it also resonated with broader aspirations of social movements that had fought for the democratization of state–society relations (Kaldor 2003: 9; Molyneux 2008: 782). The concept of civil society embodied in the PRS approach primarily reflected neoliberal ideas of a ‘third sector’, with an emphasis on the role of civil society actors, especially non-governmental organizations (NGOs), in delivering aid and reaching the poor (Kaldor 2003: 15). However, the approach also drew from alternative approaches to development and civil society which viewed participation as an opportunity to work towards the empowerment of civil society, especially the poor, whose needs had traditionally been marginalized by elites and by the priorities of neoliberal reform (Trócaire 2006). The implicit theory of change behind the PRS approach focused on how civil society participation would help to deliver a nationally owned strategy, by generating a critical mass of support behind the effort (Booth et al. 2006: 16; Lazarus 2008: 1206; Morrison and Singer 2007: 722), and by enhan­cing poverty reduction interventions. But the optimistic and ambitious asser­tions about what participation might deliver were not rooted in a clear understanding of what the role of civil society in development or democracy should be. The emphasis on NGOs involved in delivering aid sidelined other types of civil society organizations, such as trade unions and business groups, that were not seen to represent the poor (Tendler 2004: 131), limiting the range of participation. Insufficient atten­tion was given to how weak and incomplete democratization shapes and constrains the transform­ 162

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ative potential of civil society (Dijkstra 2005: 445), especially in societies marked by inequality and a weak rule of law (Eberlei 2007: 2). Finally, no clear criteria were defined for assessing what constitutes participation, whether consultation and information-sharing about policy plans, or a move towards empowerment, a situation in which civil society can initiate policy discussions as well as taking part in decision-making (Stewart and Wang 2003: 6). An extensive body of literature has been produced on the PRS approach in practice since 1999. Initial ‘technical’ reviews were driven by donor concerns about the capacity of the state to facilitate civil society engagement with a technical poverty agenda, and managing expectations (Lazarus 2008: 1208). The institutionalization of participation by embedding it in national accountability structures was recommended for enhancing ownership (IEO 2003: 4; Lazarus 2008: 1213; Morrison and Singer 2007: 723). ‘Reformist’ reviews were driven by concerns that there were fundamental problems with the theory of change behind the PRS approach (Lazarus 2008: 1209). The tendency of donors to buy in to a simplistic view that civil society and participation could serve as a panacea for political problems with democracy in developing countries was highlighted (Brown 2004: 249; Booth 2005: 10). The rationale for focusing on civil society participation, rather than on parliaments and political parties, was questioned (Eberlei 2007: 19). However, the substantive preoccupation of these was to change what donors were doing to improve the PRS approach. In contrast, ‘radical’ perspectives challenged the benign assumptions of the PRS approach, charging that it facilitated the continued imposition of a neoliberal agenda on national policy under a mask of ‘ownership’ (Craig and Porter 2003: 4–5; Gould and Ojanen 2003: 9). Instead of creating a virtuous cycle of state–society relations, the PRS process bypassed and undermined national politics, and disempowered civil society actors via participation, neutralizing opposition (Lazarus 2008: 1215–17). Participation was not simply ‘theatre’, but worse, resulted in the co-optation and attenuation of nascent activist civil society into a neoliberal framework (Brown 2004: 249; Lazarus 2008: 1210). In this sense, even reformists were attacked for engaging in a naive attempt to engineer more ‘democratic’ development outcomes (Cammack 2004: 190). The contribution of this radical perspective is crucial since it highlights issues both in the theory of change behind the PRS approach, and in the actions taken by donors. However, the case for hegemony is overstated since evidence from these case studies suggests that neither donors nor developing country governments got it all their

own way – exactly because the theory of change implicit in the PRS approach, based on participation and ownership, did not take local political factors into account. Civil society, neoliberalism and participation before the PRS approach

These political factors had conditioned the implementation of the cumulative agenda of neoliberal reforms that pre-dated the implementation of the PRS approach. Bolivia had been a pioneer in these efforts with the introduction of the New Economic Policy in 1985 (Grindle 2003: 6), while extensive structural adjustment programmes were introduced after the end of civil conflicts in Central America from 1990 in Honduras and from 1993 in Nicaragua. Initial reforms focused on the standard prescriptions of the Washington Consensus towards reducing inflation and fiscal deficits, liberalizing trade and finance to attract foreign investment, and promoting exports as the motor of growth (Kirby 2003: 13; Williamson 2000). The second generation focused on the modernization of the state and civil service, and privatization of state owned-enterprises and utilities (Gamarra 1998: 78). By the mid-1990s the failure of reform to deliver sustainable external debt, high growth or the promised trickle-down brought a new focus on poverty, and aid donors supported targeted social funds, social sector programmes and decentralization processes. The neoliberal reform agenda was driven by technocratic elites within the state, who worked closely with donors (Nickson 2005: 399; Seppanen 2003: 26; Marti i Puig 2004: 143). But little of the focus on poverty was driven by political agendas emanating from party systems, or in response to the demands of the poor. Democratization was at best partial, and entrenched political party dynamics and an externally devised policy agenda left little room for collective actors to influence the state through formal channels. In the 1990s, political party dynamics in these three cases gave a basis of support for implementing externally imposed neoliberal reforms, but these dynamics also perpetuated clientelism and patronage, which undermined efforts to modernize the state (Whitehead 2001: 15; Ruckert 2007: 104; Torres-Rivas 2007: 163). Traditional civil society actors engaged with the political party system and the state in diverse ways. In all cases, business groups broadly supported the neoliberal agenda, but also financed patronage and clientelism. In Bolivia, the political importance of industrial trade unions waned under neoliberalism, but the unions retained considerable power to mobilize street 164

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protests. Meanwhile the importance of indigenous associations and new forms of organization rose, and by the end of the 1990s there were growing protests by new social movements against neoliberalism and political corruption (Woll 2006: 2; Gray Molina 2003: 360). In Honduras, powerful public sector unions retained significant power in negotiating wage deals with governments but did not form part of a broader social movement in favour of an alternative to neoliberal reform, while the peasants’ association was effectively politicized under the bi-party system at national level (Biekart 1999: 195), leaving little scope for agency. The legacy of the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua left trade unions and social movements subordinated to the political concerns of the Sandinista party (Grigsby 2005). The political dynamics of the pact forged between Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega and Liberal president Arnaldo Alemán from 1996 cemented political polarization and undermined formal representation in parliament (Close 2004: 11). Amid these dynamics, the neoliberal era in Bolivia, Honduras and Nicaragua facilitated the emergence of new civil society actors. The delivery of aid through new modalities encouraged the proliferation of NGOs, and participation and partnership in policy-making and service delivery became a growing feature of politics at the sub-national and local levels (Komives et al. 2003: 15). The impact on policy was diffuse as participation was segmented across a fragmented state system and there was a disconnection between local and national engagement. Still, new national civil society platforms began to emerge, most prominently around debt relief issues. In 1996 in Bolivia, the Catholic Church founded a national Jubilee platform in alliance with NGOs as part of an international campaign for debt cancellation (Morrison and Singer 2007: 728; Eyben 2003: 17). In Honduras, in the late 1990s, a professional advocacy group called FOSDEH emerged around the issue of external debt, becoming a leading member of a much broader national platform called Interforos (Seppanen 2003: 47). In Nicaragua, many of the new NGOs were founded by former Sandinista activists. A national umbrella NGO organization, the Civil Coordinator (CCER), was founded in 1999 and became prominent in lobbying around the HIPC II initiative (Bradshaw et al. 2002: 17). There were also some efforts to facilitate civil society participation at the national level before the PRS approach. In 1997 the National Dialogue in Bolivia brought together the leaders of sector-based civil society organizations with the executive to draw up a national programme. However, the agreements were never implemented, causing great disillusionment and resentment among civil society participants (Woll 2006: 6). As a result, when the PRS

approach was introduced, there was cynicism about government-led participation. In contrast, in Honduras and Nicaragua the destruction caused by Hurricane Mitch in 1998 prompted a massive aid effort and gave impetus to broad national consultations on how to manage reconstruction and transformation (Vos et al. 2003: 27). From 1999 the PRS processes attempted to build on this momentum and national civil society advocacy platforms were prominent participants. The experience of civil society participation in the PRS processes

The PRS process followed a general sequence in all countries accord­ing to the HIPC II timetable. First, an interim Poverty Reduction Strategy had to be produced and approved by the World Bank and the IMF in order for the countries to access interim debt relief. Organizing civil society participation was left to the discretion of national governments and in-country donor advisers. In these three cases, government technical units were given responsibility for the PRS process. At the interim strategy stage, there was great pressure on the technical units to comply with HIPC II timetables and civil society participation was not a central concern at this stage. Civil society actors were deliberately excluded from the preparation of the interim strategies in Bolivia and Honduras (Komives et al. 2003: 24). Consultation did take place in the interim strategy phase in Nicaragua, but civil society input was not included (Guimaraes and Avendaño 2003: 27). A more open approach to participation was considered for the elaboration of the full strategies. In Nicaragua and Honduras regional consultations took place, while in Bolivia an extensive process involving representatives from each municipality fed upwards into a regional and national process. From the outset, prominent civil society actors were dissatisfied with the official participatory processes and contested their form and content. In Nicaragua the CCER continued to contribute to the national-level spaces provided for civil society engagement, while criticizing the process for being highly centralized, top-down and controlled (Vos et al. 2003: 28). The CCER launched a parallel participatory process, with a broader agenda for discussion and grassroots input. The Jubilee foundation in Bolivia pre-empted this situation by holding a parallel bottom-up process before the official process, using church structures. This influenced the final design of the official process, which also adopted a bottom-up approach, based on municipal representation, but national roundtable discussions remained top-down (Komives et al. 2003: 30). The participatory process in Honduras had broad input from a range of actors, but it remained a top-down ­effort. 166

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In response to the failure to include civil society’s proposals in the final strategy, Interforos and FOSDEH launched a parallel process for generating bottom-up poverty eradication strategies (Hunt 2004b). These civil society actors engaged energetically around the PRS agenda in 2000 and 2001, and the process generated high expectations. However, the official processes were all criticized for the rushed time frame, the limitation of the agenda to certain issues and the failure to give participants time to prepare. In practice participation was often barely more than information-sharing on what the government was planning to include in the PRS. The contents of the consultations were synthesized, but these amounted to little more than wish-lists, and there was very limited discussion of the priorities and trade-offs fundamental for the identification of a strategy (Vos et al. 2003: 61). Only in the Bolivian case was a concrete agreement reached with participants over the use and allocation of HIPC II resources, which were ring-fenced for use by municipal government according to poverty headcount and poverty reduction criteria. However, as in Honduras and Nicaragua, there was no broader policy agreement secured between participants and the government (Booth et al. 2006: 13–14). The actual elaboration of the strategies took place within the technical units, deliberately disconnected from the participatory processes (Vos and Cabezas 2004: 56). The final strategies tended to reflect existing policies and programmes regrouped under anti-poverty definitions, along with donor priorities. These outcomes caused great disillusionment among civil society actors, and participation fatigue. The changes of government in each case in 2002 demonstrated that national ownership had not been achieved. Each incoming president sought to distance himself from the existing PRS, and set about replacing it with a new national plan. In Bolivia, President Sánchez de Lozada’s efforts were interrupted by political crisis, and he left office in 2003. The PRS approach never returned to the centre of public policy again (Komives and Dijkstra 2007: 24). In Honduras, President Maduro eventually settled for a modified ‘operational PRS’ in the context of negotiating the lapsed agreement with the IMF (Hunt 2004a). In Nicar­ agua, President Bolaños developed a national development plan but it had no explicit focus on poverty reduction (Hunt and Rodriguez 2004). In each country the PRS remained as a loose organizing framework for development policy and aid relations, but the strategies were never implemented. Some efforts were made to institutionalize civil society participation. In Bolivia and Honduras this took the shape of laws granting civil society oversight of the use of HIPC funds, while in

Nicaragua the government drew on existing legislation around the role of the National Economic and Social Planning Council (CONPES). But the PRS lost momentum as participation fatigue set in, and the civil society actors involved were sidelined by changing political dynamics. In Bolivia and Nicaragua, ‘new left’ governments in 2006 and 2007 abandoned the PRS altogether. In Honduras under President Manuel Zelaya the PRS discourse persisted, but the participatory mechanisms became rapidly discredited in 2006 and 2007 and he was eventually ousted by a coup in June 2009 (see Cannon and Hume, this volume). In all three cases, donor influence on the final content of strategies is heavily evident, while the influence of civil society is relatively low (Vos et al. 2003: 31). Donor influence was facilitated by the support given to government technical units and the pressure applied to countries to comply on time with World Bank and IMF criteria for a satisfactory process. Donors heavily influenced the selection of participants: there was a strong presence of national platforms and NGO networks that received donor funding, while parliamentarians, trade unions, women, sub-national organizations and the poor were systematically under-represented (Stewart and Wang 2003: 11–12). Moreover, donors influenced the adoption of a highly technical and apolitical approach to participation, and were a strong presence in every stage of elaboration (Vos et al. 2003: 56–7). As a result of this the PRS process remained isolated from broader government and parliaments, confirming the idea that ‘donorship’ crowded out national actors and undermined ownership in these cases. Yet these experiences of participation also highlight the fact that there was no shared understanding among donors of what civil society, and participation, was supposed to achieve. For example, agencies that supported parallel civil society processes still approved the official PRS strategies in spite of the critique that input from participation had been excluded (Dijkstra 2005: 447). With the abandonment of the original strategies, donors achieved very little of the direct aims of the  PRS approach. Beyond 2002, donors facilitated the institutionalization of participation by putting pressure on governments, and by continuing to support the participation of civil society actors. However, these participatory mechanisms were heavily reliant on donor pressure and resources to function and were not integrated with other policy-making processes (Eberlei 2007: 4). More importantly, by 2005 in all three cases the PRS was being eclipsed in national agendas, and PRS-type participation at the national level became discredited and irrelevant. This attenuates the claim that donors could impose their agenda in 168

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these three cases, and highlights the need to assess how the PRS process interacted with domestic political dynamics. The technical, isolated approach to participation also had political effects. In Bolivia, the focus on municipal representation – and limiting discussions to social issues – was interpreted as a political decision to remove the most politicized of civil society actors and of policy issues from the process, thereby depoliticizing participation (Molenaers and Renard 2005: 140), alienating national civil society organizations. Regional and national consultations were open to broad civil society participation in Honduras, but the agenda was limited to poverty issues, important actors were absent, and political parties were effectively ignored (Cuesta 2003: 29). At the same time teachers’ unions were marching over public pay deals, and the business sector was negotiating the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). These processes were carefully separated, effectively depoliticizing the PRS process as a result of its isolation from other political negotiations. Participation in Nicaragua was tightly controlled in terms of who was invited and what was discussed. The CCER attempted to broaden participation to include regional input from trade unions, peasant associations and cooperatives (Guimaraes and Avendaño 2003: 24). But the technical unit explicitly aimed to isolate participation in the PRS process from the polarization associated with party politics,1 and the process never overlapped with the concurrent negotiations around CAFTA. By limiting the agenda and breadth of participation in each case, civil society was challenged to effectively engage with and influence the state. The alternative civil society-led participatory processes demonstrate how the civil society actors involved in the PRS process contested both donor domination and political ‘handling’. Later efforts to influence and institutionalize participation, although heavily reliant on donor support, can also be interpreted as genuine attempts by civil society to secure greater space and influence for participation. In Bolivia, the participatory mechanisms embodied in the Law for National Dialogue passed in 2001 had emerged as proposals from the pre-emptive Jubilee process (Morrison and Singer 2007: 731). The influence of civil society actors on the Law for the PRS Fund passed in Honduras in 2003 was comparatively weaker, but representatives engaged with the opportunity to oversee the use of debt relief resources. In Nicaragua, the potential for this type of civil society participation vanished early. CONPES in Nicaragua pre-dated the PRS. From 2002 the legislation governing CONPES was adjusted and its membership was changed to

include only civil society representatives; it had no formal power, and could only offer recommendations to the president (Guimaraes and Avendaño 2003: 30). This was interpreted as an attempt to neutralize the political force of civil society, and the CCER withdrew in protest. In Bolivia, implementing participation under the 2001 law was highly dependent on donor resources to function, and strong divisions emerged among the civil society actors involved. These mechanisms remained isolated from formal budget oversight processes and failed to generate popular or political backing. With the shift to the left in politics, the association of these civil society actors with donors and neoliberal reform undermined their legitimacy. In Honduras, civil society representation on the Council was politically controlled, and internal divisions undermined their credibility as representatives (Hunt 2004a). In late 2005, outgoing President Maduro carried out a national road trip to consult with the poor on the use of HIPC II resources, effectively robbing the Council of its role (Hunt 2005). Parliamentarians began directly to challenge the mandate of the Council to make decisions over budget resources, and took control. Participation in the Council became overtly politicized under President Zelaya from 2006, and civil society representatives either left or became discredited (Hunt 2006). In Nicaragua, the poverty focus disappeared under President Bolaños, and formal participation was overtly politicized in a context marked by a protracted conflict between parliament and the executive, paralysing policy-making dynamics (Dye and Close 2004: 130). The political dynamics around these PRS processes highlight the naivety of the PRS approach towards political change, and the role of civil society participation in generating better policy outcomes and more accountable, or democratic, state–society relations. In Bolivia, the failure to take civil society input into account in the PRS process confirmed cynicism about the potential to achieve change through conventional state–society interaction. This ‘neoliberal’ approach to participation was at best partial; it proved unable to channel or attenuate social discontent at national level, and it was eclipsed by political change in 2005. Nonetheless, given the traditional ‘anti-state’ attitudes of civil society, the PRS process in Bolivia has been viewed as a positive effort towards constructive dialogue and included organ­ izations and representatives that had never engaged in public policy processes before. In Honduras and Nicaragua, where political change continues to be dominated by bipartisan dynamics, commentators are less generous about the impact of the PRS, and revert to more cynical interpretations of co-optation of civil society participation. In 170

Lessons for civil society and participation?

In practice, civil society participation in the PRS process was ad hoc, partial, centrally controlled and had little influence on the final strategies. The illusion of national ownership was dispelled after the 2002 elections in each case, and the strategies receded in importance in public policy agendas. Donor involvement crowded out civil society influence, but this did not take place in a unified, coherent manner. Limited steps towards ‘second generation’ strategies and the institutionalization of participation were viewed positively by donors, but these outcomes fell far short of the original ambitions of the PRS approach, and did not last beyond 2006. These experiences underline the theoretical weaknesses of the PRS approach, and its naivety about the potential of aid relationships to redefine state–society relations. The PRS approach to participation failed to offer a means of overcoming entrenched political dynamics and to engineer support for a poverty agenda. Ultimately, civil society could not substitute for elected representatives in national policy-making. New forms of participation for civil society could not overcome deep-seated polarization within society, nor did the construction of legal frameworks make these spaces immune from politicization. This highlights that whatever the deficiencies of formal political institutions, bypassing them in their core function of representation with alternative or parallel processes is risky for the participants and for democracy in general. The rise of ‘new left’ governments in each case highlights the 171

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Honduras, the space offered to civil society actors that traditionally had little influence was unprecedented. However, engagement yielded little influence and political tolerance for this type of space proved to be cosmetic (Booth et al. 2006: 18): once civil society threatened to challenge the power of vested interests represented in parliament, civil society representatives were discredited and marginalized. From 2006 under President Zelaya participation became overtly politicized. In Nicaragua, political polarization was glossed over in the design of the participatory process. The methodology deliberately focused on generating consensus, and on ensuring that this policy-making process was not contaminated by the politics of the ‘pact’. In practice, this sterilization of participation was tantamount to manipulation, and civil society actors resigned in protest. In 2007, a new type of poverty agenda was introduced by the Ortega government, but the space for civil society participation continued to be manipulated for political ends.

e­ nduring political salience of poverty issues and representation of the poor in government. For these cases, while the PRS approach remains intimately associated with the neoliberal agenda, the lessons from participation around a poverty agenda remain relevant. Ad hoc, semi-formalized forms of participation can be easily isolated, manipulated, politicized and delegitimized in contexts of high poverty, deep inequality and weak democracy. In Honduras, President Zelaya used the PRS funds and participatory mechanisms to generate popular support from unions and civil society actors (De Jong et al. 2007: 23), as a basis for overcoming resistance from parliament to his policies. ­Zelaya’s attempts to bypass and overhaul formal politics in this way were risky because he lacked either a firm legal basis or sufficiently broad support. The main political parties conspired and supported a coup ousting him from power in June 2009, highlighting the entrenchment of two-party interests (Torres-Rivas 2010: 59). The election of Sandinista President Ortega in Nicaragua has resulted in the politics of the ‘pact’ further infiltrating state institutions. There have been overt efforts to dominate and control all sectors of civil society, through repression and the creation of partisan participatory mechanisms (Anderson and Dodd 2009: 164). These dynamics have weakened the strength and legitimacy of formal democratic institutions. In both cases, breaking these dynamics will require new coalitions and political strategies from civil society. The sea-change in Bolivian politics in 2005, which coincided with the end of the PRS period, suggests that to achieve a greater, and more sustainable, representation of the poor in policymaking, a leap from civil to political society may be required. Since 2006 President Morales has faced great political challenges in delivering fundamental constitutional change, incorporating greater participation for civil society. This is heavily contested, but in contrast to the PRS approach, Morales relies on a democratic mandate, rather than donor pressure, as the impetus for change and for its legitimization (Crabtree 2008: 4). This case underlines the fact that participation and representation of the poor cannot be achieved through externally imposed conditions, nor can top-down responses to poverty reduction and participation substitute for the complex political processes that can deliver sustainable social transformation and democratization of state–society relations. Note 1  Interview with Claudia Pineda, member of SETEC technical unit in 1999, Managua, 19 January 2009. 172

12 | New left governments, civil society and constructing a social dimension in Mercosur J os é B rice ñ o R uiz

One of the tenets of this book is that the wave of left-wing and leftof-centre governments elected in Latin American since 1998 has led to a rearticulation of relations between state and civil society. Instead of seeing the state as an agent of oppression and civil society as a force for liberation, it is argued in the introduction to this volume that state and civil society mutually constitute one another in an ongoing and dynamic process. In this framework, a reconfiguration of the idea of democratization has taken place so that it is not understood only as the holding of free elections at regular intervals, but is complemented by the idea of improving the standard of living of populations and increasing their participation in the decision-making process. This dynamic has also seen the emergence of new responses to deal with the challenges globalization has posed to Latin American countries. Instead of seeing the response to globalization as trade liberalization and insertion in the global economy, the new governments subscribe to the belief that ‘free trade is not enough’. As a consequence, an emphasis on industrialization has re-emerged in the region, as well as a commitment to foster social policies. This chapter analyses the extent to which these changes in the idea of state–civil society relations, democratization and responses to global­ ization have influenced the recent development of regional integration in Latin America. This is done through taking the Southern Common Market (Mercosur) as a case study. Mercosur was created at a time when governments were favourable to free market policies and the region was experiencing its early transition to democracy after decades of military governments. Mercosur was conceived as a response to globalization, a response based on global economic insertion, free trade and open regionalism. Thus, the Treaty of Asunción that set up Mercosur in 1991 was essentially a trade agreement, without any social objective. Similarly, the idea of using Mercosur as a mechanism to further the transformation of the productive structure by fostering industrialization was discarded. 173

To a large extent, this model of regional integration adopted in Mercosur was the result of the interests of the political actors that participated in the negotiations of the Asunción Treaty. It was essentially an intergovernmental negotiation led by neoliberal governments in which social actors did not participate. Subsequently, the Protocol of Ouro Preto (1994) which complemented the Asunción Treaty was also the result of the action of neoliberal governments, even if lobbying by some business sectors and multinational corporations played a role in the negotiations (see Briceño Ruiz 2011). For this reason, social actors severely criticized the Mercosur integration model, which was perceived only as a project to protect the interests of the productive sectors. To achieve the objectives of ‘economic development’ and ‘social justice’, a social dimension was needed in Mercosur. This chapter analyses the process of constructing the social dimension of Mercosur and the extent to which the interactions between nation-states led by the left-wing governments and civil society shaped this process after 2003. Drawing on Deacon et al. (2007) and Yeates (2005), one can argue that a model of social regionalism has been gradually adopted in Mercosur, in which some social norms have been instituted, regional redistributive social policies have been implemented and regional institutions that allow citizens to defend their social rights have been established. The construction of this model of social regionalism started in the 1990s in the labour and education sectors. Some important progress was achieved in the labour sector as a result of the political mobilization of the trade unions organized in the Coordinating Committee of Southern Cone Trade Union Confederations (CCSCS). The rise of the new left to government in Argentina and Brazil drove the consolidation of a social dimension in Mercosur from 2003. From that year, the social dimension of Mercosur stopped being centred on labour and education. Initiatives aimed at establishing regional welfare policies and promoting equity have been furthered, owing to a large extent to the actions of the new governments. Similarly, new spaces for the political action of societal actors have also been fostered, such as the Social Summits and Summits of the People of the South. The main argument of this chapter is that the construction of the social dimension of Mercosur has been a complex process, in which state actors and civil society have worked together. Contrary to the false dichotomy of ‘integration from the bottom’ or ‘integration from the top’, what we see in the case of Mercosur is a pragmatic alliance of civil society and some governmental sectors interested in pushing 174

Constructing the social dimension of Mercosur

The first political mobilization for a social dimension in Mercosur was fostered by the trade unions organized in the CCSCS. This ­regional network demanded throughout the 1990s the creation of social institutions, norms and policies in the labour sphere. However, the creation of a social dimension in Mercosur was not limited to labour issues. Progress was achieved in the sphere of education by creating, in 1992, the so-called ‘Mercosur education’, or the Mercosur Education System (SEM). Since the beginning of the new millennium the demands for a social dimension in Mercosur were further broadened and a paradigm shift took place. While the socio-labour Mercosur developed in 1990s was seen as a response to the potential negative impacts of integration, the new social institutions designed in the 2000s aimed to transform the regional bloc into a space in which to coordinate social policies and promote a social and compassionate economy. Additionally, while the demands for a ‘social Mercosur’ in the 1990s came essentially from the CCSCS, in the 2000s other civil society actors called for ‘a new Mercosur’ with a strong social dimension. This critique by civil society actors of the Mercosur model was part of a global strategy pursued by these actors in the context of a regional movement to challenge the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). If the FTAA process promoted by the USA was seen to favour the interests of the US government and multinational corporations, Mercosur was also criticized for its limited achievements on social issues. The year 2003 was a crossroads in the process of the building of 175

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a social dimension within the regional integration process. An alliance of this kind existed – albeit in embryonic form – in the 1990s when the trade unions and ministries of labour established a kind of non-formal coalition to build a socio-labour dimension in Mercosur. However, the real deepening of this process took place from 2003 onwards, when the new governments with a strong commitment to social issues began a process of constructing a social dimension in Mercosur. For the new governments, the inclusion of the social actors was an attempt to democratize the regional integration process by furthering a regional social policy. As a consequence, Mercosur stopped being just a free trade agreement based upon open regionalism as a response to globalization. Instead, the new governments aimed to find a new way to respond to the realities of the global economy in which the social and productive dimensions complement trade.

a social dimension in Mercosur. On the one hand, after a severe economic crisis, Argentina experienced a gradual recovery, thus creating suitable conditions in which to relaunch the regional project. On the other hand, the rise to power of Luis Inacio Lula da Silva in Brazil and Néstor Kirchner in Argentina was crucial, as both presidents favoured an economic policy based more on state intervention and with a strong social dimension. The creation of a social dimension in Mercosur therefore gathered momentum in the early years of the Lula and Kirchner governments. The rapprochement between Argentina and Brazil leading to the relaunch of Mercosur began even before the rise to power of Kirchner. Lula met the former Argentinian president Eduardo Duhalde in Jan­ uary 2003, to discuss various issues of bilateral interest. In the final communiqué of the summit, the presidents agreed on principles on which the relationship between Argentina and Brazil should be based. In particular, they agreed to deepen the integration process and widen Mercosur to incorporate more South American countries. Lula and Kirchner met in Brasilia in June 2003 to establish mechanisms to revive the regional bloc. The result of this summit was the Document of Brasilia, which reiterated the need for strengthening the strategic alliance between Argentina and Brazil, a crucial factor in continuing the Mercosur integration process. In the Document improving the quality of the integration process through reforms in the trade and institutional spheres was seen as fundamental. Similarly, issues such as the bloc’s external relations, the social and productive dimensions and improving regional infrastructure were discussed. Both heads of state asserted that both Mercosur and South American integration should aim at forming a regional integration model in which economic growth, social justice and the dignity of citizens could be promoted (see Vázquez and Briceño Ruiz 2009). The ‘Programme for the Consolidation of the Customs Union and Common Market Relaunch Agenda 2006’ was approved at the Mercosur summit held in Asunción, Paraguay, in June 2003. This was the formal beginning of the process of deepening regional integration. The programme had four axes that went beyond what was agreed in the Treaty of Asunción: a) a programme for political, social and cultural development; b) a programme for a customs union; c) the basis of a programme for a common market; and d) a new integration programme (see Bizzozero 2003; Vázquez and Briceño Ruiz 2009). The strategic alliance between Argentina and Brazil to relaunch Mercosur was confirmed in the Buenos Aires Consensus, signed in 176

Regional integration remains a strategic option for strengthening the insertion of our countries in the world and enhancing our bargaining power. Greater autonomy in the decision-making process will allow us to confront in the most effective way the destabilizing movement of speculative financial capital as well as the conflicting interests of more developed blocs … Thus we hold that South American integration must be promoted in the interest of all parties, having as its aim the formation of a development model in which growth, social justice and the dignity of all citizens go hand in hand. (Consenso de Buenos Aires [Buenos Aires Consensus], 16 October 2003)

Finally, the Work Programme 2004–2006 (WP 2004–2006) was agreed by the Common Market Council held in December 2003. The WP established a complete road map for trade liberalization and the development of a ‘new integration agenda’. At the same time, the WP introduced a new range of issues to the integration agenda, in which trade ceased being the cornerstone (Vázquez and Geneyro 2007: 50). The goal was to draw attention to other dimensions of the integration process, including social and productive dimensions, which constitute the two new axes of Mercosur. From 2004 onwards, two processes can be observed in the creation of the social dimension of Mercosur. On the one hand, a new nomen­ clature (‘social Mercosur’) emerged. In addition to ‘socio-labour Mercosur’ or ‘education Mercosur’, the so-called ‘social Mercosur’ describes a particular aspect of the social dimension of the regional bloc: the Summits of Ministers of Social Development and the creation of new specialized institutions on social issues. These new regional institutions have no relation with free trade or with the political dimension of Mercosur. Their goal is the development of a regional social policy, a kind of regional welfare project for the Mercosur countries. On the other hand, new channels of participation for civil society in the social domain were created, especially after 2006. The first of these were the Social Summits, a space for the participation of civil society furthered by national governments. The second are the so-called Summits of the Peoples of the South.

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October 2003 by Lula and Kirchner. Both presidents called for more autonomous and socially oriented development and formulated a new strategy to manage globalization:

Social Mercosur: a new aspect in the social dimension of the regional bloc

It is necessary here to make clear that in the official language of Mercosur there exists a division between ‘social Mercosur’, ‘sociolabour Mercosur’ and ‘education Mercosur’. From the institutional point of view they are different areas, which are handled by different government agencies and not always well articulated with one another. Social Mercosur describes the set of policies under the competence of the meetings of Ministers and High Authorities of Social Development, such as child malnutrition, health insurance and food sovereignty. Moreover, this dimension comprises the creation of a regional institutional structure for social Mercosur, such as the meetings of the Ministers of Social Development.1 Social Mercosur aims at creating institutions, standards and policies to deal with the social problems of the region, whether or not these result from the negative impact of economic integration policies. It was created to implement policies to further equity through redistributive measures, and to enable excluded sectors of the population to access education, health, housing and quality public services. Therefore, social Mercosur is concerned with welfare state measures to reduce poverty, redistribute wealth, promote social justice and regulate market institutions (Vázquez 2011). This shift in the development of the social dimension of Mercosur accorded with the political changes at national level in the four countries, one of the common features of which was criticism of the economic model adopted in the 1990s. In this sense, the Carta of Montevideo, one of the pillars of social Mercosur, approved in 2007, harshly criticized that model: The integration processes were born in the early 1990s with a bias that was too economistic. Mercosur had to deal with the political, social and economic legacy of populist governments and decades of authoritarian regimes that caused a crisis in the embryonic welfare state. These factors have also contributed to maintaining political and economic instability in the countries of the region, obstructing the eradication of poverty and of historic social inequality. All this was exacerbated by imposing economic policies based on neoliberal ideas in the 1980s and 1990s (such as the Washington Consensus), which in most cases led to the exclusion of broad sectors of society and the precariousness of their living conditions. (Declaración de Principios del Mercosur Social 2007: 3) 178

The new left-wing governments and the creation of social Mercosur

The new left governments have played a crucial role in the construction of social Mercosur since 2003. These governments favoured the consolidation of strong social policies in the regional bloc and they have succeeded in linking that aim with the demands of non-state actors. Thus, the national governments have fostered the creation of spaces for regional civil society to present their demands for a social dimension in Mercosur. Such spaces have been called ‘Mercosur Social Summits’, promoted since 2006 by the government that holds the rotating presidency of the regional bloc. The process began in Argentina. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs played a crucial role in creating these spaces for participation. During Néstor Kirchner’s administration, the Under-Secretariat on Latin American Integration and Mercosur in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs promoted the establishment of spaces for dialogue between the Argen­ tinian government and civil society on regional integration issues. The minister of foreign affairs, Rafael Bielsa, proposed in 2003 the creation of a new department in the ministry: a Special Representation for Regional Integration and Social Participation (REIPS in Spanish) (Racov­schik 2009: 17). The objective was to create a mechanism to provide civil society with information about foreign policy and ­regional integration and, in particular, about Mercosur. Previously, a Civil ­Society Consultative Council to further the participation of social actors in the negotiations of the Free Trade Area of the Americas had been created in December 2002. This Consultative Council was transformed into the REIPS by Bielsa, although Eduardo Sigal, Under-Secretary of American Integration, and Hugo Varsky, Special Representative for 179

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The new regional political context, with the emergence of left-wing governments, led to the reaffirmation of a Latin American view regarding the centrality of the state in the search for solutions to regional problems in a context of economic growth and social development. Thus, Mercosur is considered part of a historical process that aims to promote the well-being and development of the people (ibid.). In this context, regional integration ceases being simply a free trade project, and the social dimension of integration just a response to the negative effects of trade liberalization. Social Mercosur would become a regional institutional framework to foster social policies and to build a social economy that would spread its effects throughout all sectors of the population.

Regional Integration and Social Participation, also played important roles in the process. Thus, the former FTAA Advisory Council was transformed into a new council that aimed to promote the participation of Southern Cone civil society in the Mercosur process. The new institutional framework was called the Civil Society Consultative Council in Mercosur (CCSC) (interview with Mariana Vázquez, 2009). The CCSC was attached to the REIPS. According to Hugo Varsky, the CCSC aimed to develop a work programme with civil society based on three issues. The first was information, because the social leaders should be informed about the process of regional integration and foreign policy. The second was training for social leaders on issues of regional integration, trade and Mercosur. To achieve this, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs organized courses and seminars taught by officials specializing in those issues. According to Varsky, ‘the doors of the Instituto del Servicio Exterior de la Nación [ISEN], the Argentinian diplomatic school, were opened to invite in social leaders’.2 The third was ‘organization’ by establishing Technical Committees in which social actors could discuss and analyse regional integration issues. The Argentinian experience was replicated in other countries of the region. In Brazil, the social dimension of Mercosur became increasingly important following Lula da Silva’s accession to office in 2003. The government organized a series of conferences in various Brazilian states to inform social actors on and discuss with them topics related to Mercosur. These conferences were called Encontro com o Mercosul, a join initiative of the General Secretary of the Presidency, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Brazilian branch of Mercosur Social, the Consultative Forum and the Parliament of Mercosur (see Secretaria-Geral da Presidência da República Comissão Parlamentar Conjunta do Mercosul and Ministério das Relações Exteriores 2005). Encontro com o Mercosul was created with the goal of ‘internalizing’ the Mercosur integration process within the local population by strengthening channels of participation, providing information about the regional bloc and fostering the creation of a ‘regional identity’ in Mercosur (Vázquez and Geneyro 2007: 105). Five meetings were held in Brazilian cities such as Recife (March 2005), Salvador (May 2005), Belem (June 2005), Belo Horizonte (October 2005), Fortaleza (May 2006) and Rio de Janeiro (July 2008). Brazil held Mercosur’s rotating presidency in the second semester of 2008. Lula approved the creation of the Conselho Brasileiro do Mercosul Social e Participativo in November 2008. This was a new governmental institutional framework to pub­ 180

The special political moment that Mercosur is experiencing demands more than ever that we go further in cultural integration and in integrating the citizens of the region … It is the moment to move forward in the construction of a Mercosur citizenship, because this will be the democratic domain in which we painstakingly carry on building our agreements. We should assume that we are all Mercosur [Somos Mercosur in the Spanish original] and that the success of this great political project depends on all us. (Tabaré Vázquez, quoted in Vázquez and Geneyro 2007: 24)

The force behind the creation of ‘Somos Mercosur’ was strengthening the social, political and cultural dimensions of the regional integration process, dimensions that were considered a necessary complement to the economic and trade aspects of Mercosur. ‘Somos Mercosur’ was also seen as a contribution to democratizing the regional bloc. In 181

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licize the Brazilian government’s policies related to Mercosur, fostering discussion about diverse topics of the regional bloc and channelling the proposals of civil society (see Martins et al. 2011: 151–2). A small section to promote relations with social actors was created in Uruguay in 2004 under the auspices of the secretary-general of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, though it remained of limited significance (interview with Mariana Vázquez, 2009). A shift took place in 2005 when the new government of the Frente Amplio (FA) under President Tabaré Vázquez took power. Important progress had already been achieved in Uruguayan social participation related to Mercosur – for example, the creation of the Comisión Sectorial del Mercosur (COMISEC) in 1991 and the political mobilization of the Uruguayan trade union Plenario Intersindical de Trabajadores – Convención Nacional de Trabajadores (PIT-CNT) in the promotion of ‘socio-labour Mercosur’. Arguably, this mobilization was the reason why there was less pressure in Uruguay to establish institutions similar to those Kirchner and Lula were promo­ ting in their countries. However, the FA had in its electoral campaign a commitment to promote regional integration and in particular Mercosur, which they called ‘Uruguay integrado’ (see Frente Amplio 2004). The beginning of the FA government coincided with the Uruguayan rotating presidency of Mercosur. Within the Frente a debate took place stressing the need to use this presidency to further ‘another kind of integration’ or a ‘citizens’ integration’ in Mercosur. The result was the announcement of the programme ‘Somos Mercosur’, presented by President Vázquez at the Mercosur summit held in June 2005. Vázquez asserted on that occasion:

particular, ‘Somos Mercosur’ highlighted the need for a regional parliament, considered necessary to give a voice to civil society and political actors within Mercosur. The initiative also fostered the establishment of strategic alliances with local governments closer to ordinary people and, in consequence, with the potential to contribute to the creation of a Mercosur identity. This alliance would be mostly built through the Mercociudades (‘Mercosur cities’) programme (Pereira 2006: 6–7). As in Uruguay, a small section to further links with civil society was created in the General Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Paraguay. However, the initiative to create a space to promote relations with civil society achieved few results. When Fernando Lugo became president in 2008 it was hoped that a space similar to those created in Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay would be established in Paraguay. Lugo’s discourse, stressing that ‘we are citizens of the South’, reinforced this expectation. Nonetheless, little progress has been achieved. Two conclusions can be drawn. First, the creation of spaces for civil society in Mercosur was to a large extent the initiative of states ruled by left-wing governments. The Consultative Council of Civil Society (Consejo Consultivo de la Sociedad Civil), Encontro com o Mercosul and Somos Mercosur were governmental initiatives. Secondly, all these proposals were at the beginning developed at national level because the interlocutors with civil society actors were the authorities responsible for the integration policy, in particular the ministries of foreign affairs. The regionalization of the spaces of participation and the Social Summits

The process of regionalizing these initiatives began in 2006 under the Argentinian rotating presidency of Mercosur. Hugo Varsky, the then head of the REIPS, proposed transforming Somos Mercosur into a regional programme in which the national spaces of civil society participation would be the focal points. Thus, the Regional Programme Somos Mercosur (Programa Regional Somos Mercosur) was created (interview with Mariana Vázquez, 2009; interview with Hugo Varsky, 2009) as an umbrella, under which a set of actions, proposals and initiatives of various social organizations and governments were interlinked. All the actors preserved their individuality and autonomy, but at the same time they exchanged their agendas, articulated their activities and established common criteria (Varsky 2006: 189). Under the auspices of the Regional Programme Somos Mercosur, a summit called ‘I Encuentro por un Mercosur Productivo y Solidario’ took place within the framework of the Mercosur summit held in 182

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Cordoba, Argentina, in June 2006. This was the first Mercosur Social Summit, in which around five hundred regional organizations from the Mercosur countries (including Venezuela) participated. Subsequently, when Brazil held the rotating presidency of Mercosur in the second half of 2006, Lula’s government launched a proposal to organize the first Mercosur Social Summit. This gave rise to criticism from some governmental sectors in Argentina, which considered that the first summit had been already held in Cordoba. However, the Lula government did organize the I Mercosur Social Summit, which was held in Brasilia, in December 2006. Around five hundred organizations participated. After the Cordoba and Brasilia summits, a wave of ‘social summitry’ developed. Social Summits were held simultaneously with the Mercosur Presidential Common Market Council Summit. Social Summits have been held in Montevideo (2007), Asunción (2007), Tucumán (2008), Salvador de Bahía (2008), Asunción (2009), Montevideo (2009), Chaco (2010), Foz de Iguaçu (2010) and Asunción (2011). Criticisms have been raised about the nature and methodology of the Social Summits. In particular, even if the summits are described as spaces for the participation of civil society, they are actually official events, the main objective of which is to establish channels of communication between governments and the social and productive actors. For this reason, Mariana Vázquez argues that is not correct to call these events ‘parallel summits’. By doing so, one could give the wrong impression that the ‘Social Summits’ are in opposition to the ‘official summits’ of heads of government. Rather, the ‘Social Summits’ are summits held simultaneously with those officially organized by the state that holds the rotating presidency of Mercosur (interview with Mariana Vázquez, 2009). On the methodology of the Social Summits the question has been raised as to whether these are real spaces of participation. Critics argue that the Social Summits are just a place for dialogue and exchange of information between social actors and states. Furthermore, the summits’ potential to impact on the Mercosur policy-making process has been quite limited (see Almany and Leandro 2006). Despite these criticisms, the Social Summits have become a space for the political mobilization of social actors, who have been able to present their points of view, criticize Mercosur’s economic model and make proposals for a new type of regional integration in which their interests and perspectives might be better represented. However, the so-called ‘inside actors’ have been those who have participated in these spaces created by the governments. The ‘outside actors’ have chosen to participate in another space: the Summits of the People of the South.

The space of the outsiders: the Summits of the Peoples of the South

Civil society ‘outsiders’3 feel no attachment to the Mercosur Social Summits organized by governments. This is the case with the social movements and NGOs organized around the Alianza Social Continental or Hemispheric Social Alliance (HSA), a social network created in 1997 in the context of the FTAA negotiations. This network rejected the FTAA model of regional integration, considering it a mechanism that favoured the USA and corporate interests. Under the slogan ‘another world is possible’, the HSA proposed a new model of regional integration to deal with people’s concrete problems, such as health, education, social inclusion and equity. The HSA participated in the Corboda summit, but this was the only time that the network attended a Social Summit. Instead of participating in the following summits organized by the governments, the HSA created its own space of participation: a parallel summit called the Summits of the People of the South. These were a continuation of the Summit of the Peoples that had been held since 1998 within the framework of the FTAA negotiations. Summits of this kind took place in Santiago de Chile (1998), Quebec (2001) and Mar del Plata (2005). After the sidelining of the FTAA in 2005, the HSA focused its attention on sub-regional integration schemes such as Mercosur or the emerging South American Community of Nations. Such initiatives were also criticized for being excessively influenced by neoliberal ideas and for lacking a strong social dimension. The summit in Cochabamba, Bolivia, held in December 2006, was the beginning of a new South American ‘summitry’ (the Summit of the People of the South), in which the HSA and other outsiders played a crucial role. Adopting the model of the FTAA summitry, the Summits of the People of the South were held before the official Mercosur summits, organized by the HSA without any participation by governments and irrespective of the Social Summits organized as part of the regional Somos Mercosur programme. After Cochabamba, Summits of the Peoples of the South were held in Santiago de Chile (2007), Asunción (2007), Montevideo (2007), Lima (2008), Posadas, Argentina (2008), Salvador de Bahía (2008) and Asunción (2009). It is valid to argue that the reaction of the outsider actors to the Social Summits is a response to the ‘state form’ that the governments have sought to give to ‘social Mercosur’. Those organized by the HSA have chosen a radical strategy that calls for a thoroughgoing reconfiguration of Mercosur and the other regional integration initiatives currently developed in Latin America. 184

The consolidation of a strong social dimension in Mercosur was sparked off by states as a part of their commitment to deepening democracy. For the new governments the alliance with civil society was one of the pillars of this strategy. As described in this chapter, the governmental action was twofold: on the one hand, the development of a new approach to understanding the social dimension of Mercosur and, on the other, the creation of spaces for the participation of civil society. The adoption of this new approach implies superseding what prevailed in the 1990s, according to which the social dimension of regional integration aimed at compensating social sectors that had been affected by trade liberalization. The new approach furthered by the left governments seeks to transform the idea of regionalism itself so that it ceases being centred on trade and focuses instead on the social and productive dimensions of the Mercosur process. In this sense, the ‘social and productive dimension of Mercosur’ implies a new way of responding to globalization. The creation of new spaces for the participation of civil society is also an attempt to democratize the integration process. At the same time, the experience of Mercosur shows that states and civil society can work together in the construction of an integration model that goes beyond free trade and neoliberalism. Certainly, cooperation does not mean assimilation, and the creation of the Summits of the People of the South is means for some sectors of civil society to create its own space for political action. It can be argued that the ongoing transformation of Mercosur is the result of the changes in political opportunity structure in the region. This is a concept originated by Sidney Tarrow to describe ‘consistent – but not necessarily formal, permanent or national – signals to social or political actors which either encourage or discourage them to use their internal resources to form social movements’ (Tarrow 1994: 54). We can argue that the governments of Carlos Menem and Lula da Silva are two quite particular moments in the political opportunity structure in Mercosur. While in Menem’s era free trade was the dominant agenda, Lula’s government highlighted the implementation of national policies to reduce poverty. While Menem essentially established an alliance with the business sector, Lula was closer to various social actors. In other words, the structure of political opportunity changed after 2003, and the social actors found new channels of dialogue with national governments and mechanisms that allow them to make their 185

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Conclusions

demands heard. These national changes influenced the development of Mercosur and its attempts to construct a strong social dimension within the process of regional integration. Notes 1  Interview with Mariana Vásquez, lecturer at the University of Buenos Aires, former official at the Argentine Ministry of Economics and former head of the Coordina­ting Body of the Consultative Council of Civil Society of the Under-Secretariat of American Integration and Mercosur of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Buenos Aires, 22 July 2009. 2  Interview with Ambassador Hugo Varsky, head of the Coordination of Productive Integration of the

Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Argentina, Buenos Aires, 3 June 2009. 3  Smith and Korzeniewicz distinguish between ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ civil society actors. The former are the actors who have decided to participate in the spaces created by the governments, such as the Social Summits. The latter are those who pressurize outside of the formal participation mechanisms set up by the governments (see Smith and Korzeniewicz 2005).

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13 | Civil society–state relations in left-led Latin America: deepening democratization? B arry C annon and P eadar K irby

Since the end of the Cold War the concept of civil society has been adopted as a crucial tool to further democracy and development in Latin America. Mainstream analysts such as Diamond (1999) put forward a model of civil society which consolidated liberal democratic structures and furthered market-oriented economic policy. Central to this theory was a sharp distinction between state and civil society, whereby civil society acts as a check on the former’s actions, pro­ viding it with legitimacy but with little or no popular participation in decision-making structures and processes. This model guided most ‘transitions’ to democracy in Latin America during the 1980s. Since the swing to the left in the region, beginning with the election of President Hugo Chávez in Venezuela in 1998, a search has been ­taking place by most left movements and parties to recalibrate state–civil society relations. This can be seen in initiatives such as participatory budgeting (PB) in Porto Alegre, Brazil, or in the ‘communal councils’ set up by the current Venezuelan government. Indeed, these experiments could be seen as abandoning liberal principles and moving in the direction of what Nancy Fraser (1993) terms ‘strong publics’. By this she means that participation brings the role of civil society beyond that of mere opinion formation and towards authoritative decision-making, implying that the liberal separation of state and civil society dissolves and is replaced by an inter-imbrication of these two spheres. In this way such experiments can also be seen within emerging theories on post-neoliberalism. Grugel and Riggirozzi (2012) provide a useful distinction between ‘post-neoliberal policies that seek to “rebuild” the state in relation to the market, and post-neoliberal aspirations to “reclaim” the state by and for socially and economic­ally excluded communities and groups’. Such participative measures move some way in the direction of the latter, but the question then arises as to what extent these are affected by state-building measures, and vice versa. Furthermore, as outlined in Chapter 1, these r­elationships 189

between state and civil society need to be examined within the wider context of globalization since this imposes particular incentive structures for states reliant on resource exports for economic growth. This chapter draws conclusions based on the findings of the contributors to this volume. On relations between civil society and the state, two major themes run through the book. First, there is a tension identified between the idealism of the theory of participation and the compromises made by states in carrying it out in practice, compromises dictated by the hard facts of existing power relations, at the local, national, regional and international levels. Secondly, there is a further tension identified between the exigencies of existing representative liberal democratic institutions and those of the emerging participatory models, with some chapters arguing that eventually one must prevail over the other. In effect what we argue is that ‘postneoliberal policies that seek to “rebuild” the role of the state in relation to the market’ (ibid.) can end up prejudicing the post-neoliberal aspirations to ‘reclaim’ the state mentioned above; that the former may inevitably trump the latter. These tensions and dilemmas are identified at three levels – the national, the local and the international – which for analytical purposes can be separated but at the practical level are profoundly interrelated and intertwined. Chapters by Muhr, Wylde, Cannon and Hume, de la Torre, Leubolt et al., and Jara Reyes show how the contradictions between the demands of representative and participative elements in some left-wing states can be inherently conflictive, leading to a situation whereby one may end up im­posing itself upon, or prejudicing, the other. Bringing in the context of global­ ization, chapters by Hogenboom, Schilling-Vacaflor and Vollrath, and Nem Singh show how the dependence of left-wing governments on extractive industries for resources to help reduce poverty – a key objective for effective popular participation, according to Fraser – in itself contradicts the spirit and practice of such participation, particularly at the local level and especially of indigenous groups concerned at such industrial activity. Finally, Hunt and Briceño Ruiz illustrate in two very different contexts the complex dynamics between popular demands at the national level and the influence of the regional and international context on how, and to what extent, those demands are met. This, then, is the terrain covered by this book. To draw conclusions about the prospects for democratization in left-led Latin America, the next section briefly summarizes what the recent literature on the new left has been concluding. The following and longest section surveys under three headings the book’s chapters to identify what this book 190

Towards ‘strong publics’? Democratization and civil society–state relations in ‘pink tide’ Latin America

The emergence of the ‘pink tide’ has been located in the failures of neoliberalism to deliver its promise of prosperity, with a concurrent ‘democratic disillusion’ towards the liberal democratic political system which promoted it. This rejection of neoliberalism and, in some polities, liberal democracy was led by social movements which formed and found their voice during the neoliberal era, enriching and revitalizing the left and sidelining the old social democratic or populist parties, which were often responsible for the introduction and implementation of neoliberal programmes (Silva 2009). Among the unifying characteristics of the new left governments which emerged from this dynamic is a more pronounced search for equality to counteract the perceived increase in inequality and poverty left by neoliberalism in the region (Ramirez Gallegos 2006). This is pursued in two principal ways: through democratic innovation and a policy agenda that seeks to lessen social inequality. In the current context of ‘pink tide’ Latin America, civil society is increasingly conceived of as social movements (women, environmentalists, anti-globalization activists, indigenous groups, etc.). These social movements emerged as the chief counterbalance to the ‘social forces of oppression’ and are identified as ‘the primary impetus for social and political change’ (Barrett et al. 2008: 32). This potential for change can best be realized through the adoption of participatory democracy, which is seen as a ‘convergence between the deepening of democracy and … the revitalisation of civil society and its articulation with the state’ (ibid.: 30). As the key attribute of the state is seen as its capacity to intervene in social and economic relations, it is thus viewed as a ‘strategic terrain’ upon which contending social and political forces struggle in order to realize their strategies (ibid.: 34). Social movements thus can transcend the narrow role assigned to civil society in liberal theory, aiming to transform the state both by redirecting its modes of intervention (in order to lessen social and economic inequalities and thus alter the balance of social forces) and transforming its forms of representation (in order to make it more accessible and thus more susceptible to pressure from below). Hence, the relationship between civil society (conceived of as social movements) and the state ‘should be understood as a dialectical one’ (ibid.: 35). 191

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can add to the literature. The final section draws conclusions about the prospects for democratization.

This rejection of the liberal notion of state–civil society relations for a more dialectic conception brings these new left ideas close to Nancy Fraser’s conception of ‘strong publics’. Liberal conceptions of state–civil society relations based on a sharp separation between the two produced what Fraser termed ‘weak publics, publics whose deliberative practice consists exclusively in opinion formation and does not also encompass decision making’ (Fraser 1993: 134). Instead, what Fraser calls a ‘post-bourgeois conception’ is needed, one which brings the role of civil society beyond that of mere opinion formation and towards authoritative decision-making. While theoretically, and in practice, a number of new left governments, especially in the Andean region, sought to move towards such a renewed relationship between state and civil society, this did not always materialize in practice – see Branford (2009) on Brazil, for example. Boron offers three reasons for this. First, the increased power of markets and their ‘capacity for blackmail’ (such as capital flight, and investment strikes) against governments which may introduce policies seen as detrimental to market interests. Secondly, the persistence of imperialism, either through conditionalities imposed in return for debt readjustment by the international financial institutions (IFIs) such as the World Bank and the IMF, and/or direct political demands from the United States, such as the ‘war on drugs’ and conditions related to bilateral aid. Both are policed through ‘the ideological manipulation made possible by big capital’s almost exclusive control of the mass media, the creators of the “common sense” of our times’ (Boron 2008: 247). Third, the devaluation of democracy in the preceding decades weakened the state’s ‘capacities for intervention in social life’ (ibid.), further exacerbated by the many historical weaknesses of the state in Latin America (Panizza 2009: 226). Additionally, many Latin American left governments have pursued a development model which privileges resource extraction, bringing it into conflict with many social movements, such as environmentalist and indigenous groups in particular, despite revenue from these being used, in some cases, to satisfy social demands (Dangl 2010). All of these factors can be seen to derive from the penetration of national spaces by economic and political forces from outside whose power is reinforced in this globalized era. These factors also seriously circumscribe the room for manoeuvre of the new left governments to deliver on their promises, causing disillusion and estrangement among many of the social movements which had brought them to power and impairing the prospects for a new ‘strong publics’ model of state–civil society relations to consolidate 192

‘Strong publics’ versus ‘strong states’: tensions, dichotomies and dilemmas in ‘pink tide’ Latin America

In the introductory chapter to this book, we contended that it was necessary in analysing processes of democratization to view them with a long-term analytical lens, focusing specifically on state–civil society interaction within the wider context of neoliberal globalization. Further, we characterized civil society as a space that is constantly being shaped by hegemonic struggles between contending social forces in specific historical conjunctures. The chapters presented here confirm much of this position, while bringing added perspectives to it. To identify these added perspectives, we examine the contributions under three principal headings: new forms of state–civil society relationships, limits imposed on the promise of participatory mechanisms by the realities of power, and the ways in which dependence on resource extraction as the principal basis for economic growth impact on state– civil society relationships.

New forms of state–civil society relationships  The chapters here attest to the fact that left-led states in Latin America are pioneering new ways of involving civil society in decision-making. Most ambitious are Venezuela’s plans to provide alternatives to the neoliberal and liberal orders both at a national level in Venezuela and at a regional level through the ALBA-TCP trade and solidarity association; these plans are largely overlooked in the widespread hostility to the personality of Hugo Chávez. In Chapter 2, Muhr shows how the Bolivarian government rejects liberalism’s classic conception of the sharp separation of society and state and hopes to transform it through direct and participatory democracy. While representative democracy has a role in Bolivarian Venezuela, this is seen to be subsidiary to direct and parti­ cipative democracy, through the installation of instances of popular power – popularly run community councils and committees set up to run local neighbourhoods and the essential services necessary for their continued development – and public power, namely the formal state apparatus such as ministries. The important point is that the latter’s main function is to act as a facilitator of popular power which alone possesses sovereignty. One key aspect of the exercise of popular 193

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itself. Further, paradoxically, attempts to realize post-neoliberal aspira­ tions thorough a concentration on strengthening the state and its relationship to ­markets can end up alienating some of the left’s bases of social support.

power is through the thirty-odd universally accessible missions set up by the Bolivarian government, affecting wide areas in the social, political and cultural spheres, run on the basis of co-responsibility, whereby both the state and the community are equally responsible for the fulfilment of their constitutional and social functions. Not only do they provide essential services helping to reduce poverty and inequality but they are a means for communities to reach ‘social equality and an emancipatory individual (positive self-image) and collective identity’, essential to achieving direct and participative democracy. Finally, it is planned to apply these new forms of state–civil society relationships at regional scale through the ALBA-TCP, directly challenging neoliberal globalization. Evidence in the rest of the chapters alerts us to the need not only to examine the plans of new left governments but also how these are implemented. In Chapter 3, Wylde takes a more empirical approach to examine how Néstor Kirchner’s administration in Argentina (2003–07) redefined both the role of the state in the economy and the social contract in Argentina after its spectacular financial collapse in 2001, all in the context of an international system dominated by the interests of capital. As Wylde points out, Kirchner managed to achieve the ‘absorption of counter-hegemonic ideas into the Peronist state’ by neutralizing, through co-optation, welfare and ‘segmented corporatism’, the radical civil society responses – such as piqueteros, neighbourhood assemblies and bartering clubs – which flourished in the immediate post-crisis context. This succeeded in achieving two key objectives. First, poverty was reduced through some social transfers, some provision of social goods and placing some political limits on the free rein of market forces, though there was no systematic attempt at redistribution through developing welfare state institutions. Secondly, labour was readmitted into policy-making processes. Even in Central America, as examined by Cannon and Hume in Chapter 4, promising evidence is found of the potential for increased democratization, though the authors warn of the dangers of such potential being blocked and even of existing democratic gains being reversed. De la Torrre in Chapter 5 outlines the greater promise of the Correa government in Ecuador, which is pursuing a project of social transformation based on ‘bringing back the state through central planning, and expansion of the bureaucracy, and the regulation and control of economic, cultural and social activism’, massive increases in social spending, increasing minimum wages, and subsidies on gas, electricity and fuel provision for the poor and increased regulation of what the Correa regime terms 194

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‘corporatist interests’ – namely associations and civil society organizations representing teachers, students, public employees, labour, women and indigenous groups. While the regime was initially propelled into power on the back of an active and extensive civil society demanding more popular input into decision-making processes, the promise of a more deliberative, participative democracy has taken a back seat to one based on a conception of ‘real democracy’, meaning, quoting Correa, ‘equity, justice, and dignity’, achieved through access to ‘education, health and housing’ provided by the state. Yet while Correa’s ‘citizens’ revolution’ has moved away from its original participative conception, it still has democratizing traits, opening up space for contestation and generating inclusion through social policies. In Chapter 7, Jara Reyes highlights how Chile’s ‘penguin revolution’ of 2006 and its successor students’ revolt in 2011 have challenged the rigidities of the Chilean ‘compromise’ state and its management of civil society demands for increased participation. The ‘penguin revolution’, a multitudinous and sustained protest by Chilean secondary school students demanding improved conditions in state education services, was an unprecedented protest movement in post-Pinochet Chile, noted for the passivity of its civil society. It prompted the ­socialist president, Michelle Bachelet, into action with the formation of a Presidential Advisory Council on Education, composed of state representatives, educational experts and lecturers, as well as protesting student representatives, thereby indicating attempts by the state at forging new forms of participatory mechanisms. Since these failed to live up to their promise, President Sebastian Piñera in 2011 faced more determined civil society protests that seem to herald the end of the state–civil society relationship that emerged from the Pinochet dictatorship and the emergence of Chilean civil society as a greater force for social change. In Chapter 12, Briceño Ruiz documents the transformation of state– civil society relations at a regional level through the development of a ‘social Mercosur’. Moving beyond a narrowly economic understanding of Mercosur as a project of trade liberalization and insertion into the global economy, Briceño Ruiz shows how an emphasis on industrialization has re-emerged in the region, as well as a commitment to foster social policies. Severely criticized in its early years by social actors who saw it as a largely neoliberal project, the rise of new left governments, especially in Brazil and Argentina, pushed the consolidation of a social dimension in Mercosur from 2003 onwards. Initiatives aimed at establishing regional welfare policies and promoting equity have been

furthered, owing to a large extent to the actions of the new governments. Similarly, new spaces for the political action of societal actors have also been fostered, such as the Social Summits and Summits of the People of the South. This account raises interesting questions as to the extent to which such initiatives may be moving Mercosur beyond neoliberalism. The evidence in this book, therefore, reminds us of the many different ways in which new left governments in the region are fostering civil society participation. In some, such as Argentina, this has been more successfully institutionalized; in others, such as Ecuador, it is a terrain of strong conflict and tension, while in yet others, such as Chile, civil society pressures are putting the state on the defensive and opening new spaces which offer the promise of a new state–civil society relationship. It is, therefore, a terrain of ongoing struggle in which some sectors of civil society are being favoured over others, but it remains a terrain where civil society has claimed real power. This, therefore, seems to offer a somewhat more hopeful panorama than the conclusions drawn from the brief literature survey in the previous section. However, this volume also identifies in some detail the limits of the participatory mechanisms that have been pioneered by new left governments, as outlined in the next subsection.

Limits on participatory mechanisms  Schilling-Vacaflor and Vollrath and De la Torre point to the gulf between the participative theory behind Ecuador’s and Bolivia’s new Constitutions and how this plays out in practice. In both cases the potential of participation is limited by national priorities, with state centralization and vertical power relations seeking predominance. Further, such predominance is often secured by the privileging by the state of certain elements of civil society over others. In Chile, for example, Nem Singh shows how mining trade unions are allowed limited space at the local level to influence working conditions, but that at the national, policy-making, level private sector mining corporations are given priority. Further, among trade unions, those representing permanent plant workers are privileged above those representing contract workers. Similarly, in Argentina, Wylde informs us of the increased involvement of trade unions in a new form of ‘segmented corporatism’ alongside business and government. Yet only those in the formal sector are included, not so those Argentinians working informally. In Ecuador, De la Torre shows how indigenous groups are treated as ‘outsiders’ by President Correa, while ‘citizens’ are privileged in his discourse, with the president himself 196

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being the Ecuadorean citizen ne plus ultra. In Chile, also, Jara Reyes shows how educational ‘experts’, particularly those drawn from rightwing think tanks, dominated the Presidential Advisory Council, while in the end it is Chile’s ‘compromise state’ institutions which shape final policy, with little attention paid to the Council’s deliberations. In each case certain sectors of civil society are privileged over others as interlocutors with the state, and in these cases it is the state which dominates civil society. Hence state priorities shape civil society and its relation to the state, with the state almost always maintaining the upper hand. We can see here too continuities in state reactions with neoliberal state governance – the reliance on technocrats for policy formation and the persistence of top-down decision-making patterns. In their examination in Chapter 6 of what has become the emblematic mechanism of participatory governance under new left governments, namely participatory budgeting (PB), Leubolt et al. identify a fundamental conflict between the demands of representative and participative models of democracy that is often missed in analyses of PB. Their critical review of two PB experiences in Brazil, Porto Alegre and Osasco, makes two key points. First, far from being an idealized, Habermasian public sphere, occupied by an autonomous civil society, PB is instead as subject to Gramscian hegemonic struggle as any other public forum. Hence, ‘[p]ower relations in civil society influence the state and are in turn influenced by state power’. Secondly, the chief conduit that the authors identify for this dialectical influence is through political parties, or political society. Through political parties, the state privileges some sectors over others in processes of ‘strategic selectivity’ which are normally dependent on ‘forces and powers that exist and operate beyond the state’s formal boundaries’, but which seek ultimately to ‘impose unity in the search for hegemonic visions that seek to reconcile the particular and the universal by linking the state’s purposes to a broader – but always selective – vision of the public interest’. This interpenetration of civil society and political society manifests itself in PB in a variety of ways. First, in Porto Alegre, the authors found that PB facilitated the passing of legislation favoured by the ruling Workers’ Party (PT), which would not have been passed  by the state legislature as the PT did not have an absolute majority in the chamber. Secondly, in Osasco, PB was found to be used as a springboard for political careers, with many PB council members also political party members or sympathizers, and thus was able to provide a source of electoral support for socio-political leaders. Hence, the authors argue that political and civil societies are

inter-imbricated. Rather than providing a new autonomous ‘public sphere’, PB instead simply changed the strategic selectivity of the local state. While it strengthened popular classes and favoured resident associations in particular, providing them with access to local decisionmaking processes, it also opened up new political arenas for party activists. It has influenced the institutionality of the local state, but it has also been modified by new political majorities emerging out of that institutionality. PB hence ‘depends much more on the concrete power relations in specific contexts’ than more idealistic portrayals acknowledge. This analysis identifies the realm of political society, often the interface between civil society and the state, which is often missed in wider analyses of state–civil society relations, and raises questions about how PB may evolve as the left establishes itself more firmly in power. However, as Hunt in Chapter 11 documents, participatory mechan­ isms have also shown their limits in other ways. Her chapter examines a moment just prior to the emergence of the new left but one which greatly influenced its emergence, especially in Bolivia. She therefore provides a valuable analysis of how mechanisms of participation, namely those implemented as part of the Poverty Reduction Strategy processes (PRS) under IMF and World Bank tutelage, had very unintended consequences. PRS-style participation was supposed to enhance efficiency in development aid delivery and improve democratization at local level, within the broader neoliberal paradigm of privatized (NGO) provision of social services. Yet Hunt finds that the PRS processes, as implemented in Bolivia, Nicaragua and Honduras, were not rooted in a clear rationale, nor were they connected in a causal sequence, leaving the approach incomplete and ambiguous. It was never clear how civil society participation – mostly reduced to NGOs supported by external donors – was supposed to contribute to the final strategies. Ultimately, the actual elaboration of the strategies was carried out by technical units at the national levels, deliberately disconnected from the participatory phase. These reflected existing policies and programmes and donor priorities. Hence, rather than local ownership, the result was what Hunt calls ‘donorship’ – that is, donor priorities crowded out national actors and undermined ownership of the final Poverty Reduction Strategy. Paradoxically, therefore, patterns set during the previous ‘neoliberal’ phase of Latin American politics are, as we have seen, echoed by present new left governments – conflicts between the priorities of participation and those of representation, between national and local priorities, but also 198

Impacts of states’ dependence on resource extraction  State priorities in turn are shaped by global priorities. In Bolivia, in Ecuador, in Argentina and in Chile, chapters show how responses to civil society by the state were also guided and shaped by the exigencies of capital and the global market. In each case, states sought to take advantage of the current global commodity boom in order to help fulfil national development priorities. While in each of these cases poverty reduction was among these priorities, none of the states examined embarked on profound redistributional change. This is not to say that each limited itself to strict neoliberal precepts. Even Chile, as Nem Singh points out, cannot be strictly defined in those terms. Nevertheless, national political conditions – the fear of a right-wing backlash, for example – linked to hostile international market opinions on possible redistributional changes, limited national governments to greater or lesser degrees of dependence on revenues derived from commodity exports in order to fund social justice measures. This, nevertheless, as we have noted, led in a number of cases to friction at the local level over mining industry activity. Thus, paradoxically, democracy-deepening measures – national anti-poverty strategies – were compromised by democracy-restricting attitudes on the part of national governments. Post-neoliberal aspirations of greater inclusion clashed with post-neoliberal policies aimed at rebuilding state power. In Chapter 8, Hogenboom identifies with some precision how the current commodity boom being experienced by Latin America pres­ ented ‘obstacles and opportunities’ for new left governments. She traces the recent history of resource extraction management from the  protests and revolts over resource ownership and management 199

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between those at the local, the  national and the global levels. As such, this analysis reminds us that the state–civil society terrain is one where neither side can determine outcomes in their favour and that often the interrelationship can result in unexpected outcomes, outcomes that can favour one side or the other. This dialectical yet open-ended process of power contestation tends to be missed in some of the literature, which privileges one side over the other and fails to grasp the contingency of what is happening. This is what makes the subject so fascinating and unpredictable. Yet none of this is to avoid the structural constraints imposed on the room for manoeuvre of even the states whose leaders are most sympathetic to civil society participation. This emerged also as a major theme in this book, as detailed in the next subsection.

in the early 2000s. The core demands of these protests were a new participatory politics and a post-neoliberal development model. Once in power, new left governments adopted policies of re-­ regulation, ‘retaxation’ and even renationalizations of mineral extraction, permitting them to raise revenues to fund social programmes. This has not come without conflict, however, both at a national level, with opposition groups staging revolts in various countries in the region, with grievances over the alleged populist and arbitrary nature of progressive governments, and also at the local level, with increases in local discontent and mobilization, based around increased mining activity driven by the global commodities boom. These protests, usually led by indigenous, peasant, environmentalist or marginalized urban communities, have been met with policies of co-optation, marginal­ ization and even repression against these groups. Meanwhile these remained isolated nationally owing to the success of national poverty programmes neutralizing the possibilities of mobilization of national social movements in their support. Hence there is a fundamental dichotomy between dependence on resource extraction and adherence to principles of inclusion, plurality and popular participation. Schilling-Vacaflor and Vollrath offer in Chapter 9 concrete examples of these tensions in Bolivia and Peru. They note increased mineral extraction in both countries but different governance strategies to deal with it. In Bolivia they find more state involvement and control, in terms of both revenue expansion and increased extraction activities with redirection of resource revenues to expanded social programmes. Peru under liberal president Alan García conversely favoured privatization of extraction activities, implementing neoliberal policies, with low taxation and royalties, in order to attract foreign investment in the sector. This has resulted in a huge expansion in extracting industries and an increased influence of foreign mining and energy corporations in Peruvian policy-making circles and state. The election of Ollanta Humala as president of Peru, however, promises a new role for the state, including renegotiation of mining contracts, enhancing the role of public corporations, increasing revenue extraction and the financing of increased social expenditure. In dealing with local communities, the authors show how prior consultation was undertaken in some cases in Peru, but it had no legal recognition, whereas in Bolivia participation has constitutional status and prior consultation legal recognition. Nevertheless, in both cases they note that consultations were truncated, or inadequate or contested, either legally or through protest. They conclude that ‘the extractivist orientation of the Bolivian 200

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and Peruvian economic models constrain the possibility of indigenous and peasant communities having meaningful participation in decisions that affect them and shape their own development’. In both cases a ‘common trend is that state governments prioritize strategic economic interests and so-called “national interests” over livelihood issues and local conceptions of self-determined development, thereby reducing the real decision-making power of affected communities’, with government frequently delegitimizing and marginalizing dissident communities. Nem Singh in Chapter 10, on the role of Chilean copper mining unions in the country’s strategic copper industry, notes similar local– national and civil society–state tensions. He shows how the state, civil society and the market interact on a local level, but circumscribed within the national and global context. Placing labour relations in the key copper mining sector within Chile’s neoliberal transformation, Nem Singh shows that labour’s bargaining power has been limited primarily because of institutional constraints, the power relations embedded in the new tripartite relationship between state, market and labour, and the lack of cross-labour solidarity to criticize the resource extraction model. Chilean copper governance ensures that mining disputes – despite the industry’s national significance – are kept local. This is achieved by devolving disputes to firm level, freezing unions out of policy-making, and restricting their participation strictly to issues of wages and conditions, hence keeping union influence on wider copper governance to a minimum. Instead, private sector interests, such as the powerful Mining Council (Consejo Minero), are privileged at the national level to shape national copper and extractive industry policy. Further, workers are divided between permanent employees and contract workers, with the former having better wages and conditions than the latter, with the result that there is friction between workers, because of these differing conditions, and between workers and management, because of the limitation of disputes to the local, firm level. Despite this, however, there is a high level of unionization, high levels of militancy, and a strong critique of neoliberalism emanating from mining unions. Yet the effectiveness and impact of this are minimized owing to the structural conditions imposed on unions by the Chilean state, not to mention unions’ inability to forge alliances with other sectors voicing a critique of extractive industries, such as local indigenous communities. All of this again offers striking examples of how the state divides civil society, thereby weakening its capacity to promote change, though the wave of protests faced by President Piñera in 2011 seemed to indicate that the state’s ability to dominate civil society through this tactic was weakening.

Conclusions

It can be concluded, therefore, that the chapters presented here help support our contention as to the dialectical nature of state, civil society and market relations. Further, they bear witness to the complex, dialectical interrelationship between the local, the national and the global in the ever constant formation of state–civil society relationships on which democratization depends. The chapters suggest that ‘pink tide’ governments in Latin America have a more acute awareness of these complexities, yet are finding it difficult to change sufficiently long-standing centralist and verticalist governance patterns to satisfy some social movement elements within national civil societies, though the extent of this varies from country to country. However, what is clear is that civil society is far from a homogeneous actor and that new left states are in different ways creating further divisions among civil society actors, privileging some and marginalizing others. This difficulty is due, in no small part, to the exigencies of a persistently neoliberalized globalization, and those elements of national civil ­society and politics most closely linked to it, which encourage such vertical power relations in order to maximize the autonomy of capital. Yet despite these structural constraints, civil society remains a strong actor willing to contest state actions that undermine livelihoods. To this extent, we conclude that the book shows left-led Latin America to be characterized by ‘strong publics’, in Fraser’s phrase, since the role of civil society has moved beyond mere opinion formation to involvement, either through deliberation or contestation, in the making of decisions, though the extent of this varies from country to country, as has been pointed out. ‘Pink tide’ Latin American states hence find themselves squeezed between popular demands, articulated by key social movements for greater participation and improved ­living conditions, and global demands for pro-market orthodoxy and protection of the interests of capital; and between the pressures of post-neoliberal state-building policies and post-neoliberal inclusionary and participative aspirations. The developing relationship between these variables is the key to the success or failure of democratization processes in contemporary Latin America and to the shape of postneoliberalism in the future. It is a fascinating space, full of tensions but also of possibilities for social transformation and a deepening of democratization, while raising important questions about how we theorize democracy, citizenship and the trajectory of Latin American democratization. 202

About the contributors

Thomas Muhr is a research associate in global development at the Centre for Globalization, Education and Societies (GES), University of Bristol. His work relates globalization, regionalism and political economy, development and education, democracy, rights and security, with a focus on Latin America and the Caribbean and its international and global relations. He is the author of the book Venezuela and the ALBA: Counter-hegemony, Geographies of Integration and Development, and Higher Education for All (VDM) and editor of Alternativa Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra América (ALBA) and Counter-globalization: Resistance and the Construction of the 21st Century Socialism.

Christopher Wylde is a teaching fellow in international political economy at the University of York. His main area of research interest is the political economy of development, with a particular focus on post-crisis development. His specialism is in post-(2001) crisis Argentina and the ways in which that crisis helped shape the role of the state in the development process. His publications on this subject include an article in the Bulletin of Latin American Research and a book, Latin America after Neoliberalism, to be published by Palgrave Macmillan as part of its IPE series.

Mo Hume is a lecturer in politics at the University of Glasgow. She is author of The Politics of Violence: Gender, Conflict and Community in El Salvador (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009) and has published on the problems of post-transitional violence in Central America in a number of academic journals, including Latin American Perspectives, Bulletin of Latin American Research and Women’s Studies International Forum. Carlos de la Torre is professor of sociology and director of international studies at the University of Kentucky Lexington. He is the author of Populist Seduction in Latin America (2nd edn, Ohio University Press, 2010) and editor with Steve Striffler of the Ecuador Reader: History, Culture, Politics (Duke University Press, 2008). He was a fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation in 2011. Bernhard Leubolt is a political economist and works at the Institute 203

for Regional Development and the Environment, Vienna University of Economics and Business. He is an editor of the Austrian Journal of ­Development Studies ( Journal für Entwicklungspolitik) and has a part-time position as a research assistant at the University of Applied ­Sciences, Vienna, working on the project ‘Global finance and emer­ ging regional modes of development’. His main research interests include Latin American studies, participation, urban and regional development, inequality and equality-related politics, and state theory.

Wagner Romão is professor in the Department of Anthropology, Politics and Philosophy at Universidade Estadual Paulista – Unesp (campus Araraquara), São Paulo. He is a researcher in the Centre for Metropolitan Studies – Brazilian Centre for Analysis and Planning (CEM-CEBRAP). His main research interests are in the areas of participative and deliberative democracy, political parties and social policy.

Joachim Becker is an economist and political scientist. He works as an associate professor at the Institute for International Economics and Development at the Vienna University of Economics and Business. His research is focused on issues of development, crisis and the state. His geographical focus is both on the Mercosur countries and on eastern Europe. Andreas Novy is associate professor for urban and regional development at WU Vienna and chairperson of the Austrian Green Foundation. He has published widely in the field of political economy, development studies and urban and regional development. He has been involved in European research projects (Urspic, Singocom, Demologos, Katarsis, Social Polis) as well as transdisciplinary research in the tradition of Paulo Freire. His main publications are translated into Portuguese (Brasil: A Desordem da Periferia, 2001) and Spanish (Otro mundo es posible, 2003). René Jara Reyes is a journalist, with a master’s degree in political science from the University of Chile. He has worked as an assistant lecturer at Diego Portales University and Arcis University in Santiago, and he has written on political communication for Revista Mapocho and Comunicación y Medios. He is currently preparing his doctoral thesis at Grenoble University, on electoral participation in Chile ­during the 1990s. Barbara Hogenboom is senior lecturer in political science at the Centre for Latin American Research and Documentation (CEDLA) 204

Almut Schilling-Vacaflor, a sociologist and anthropologist, is a ­research fellow at the GIGA Institute of Latin American Studies in Hamburg. She was awarded her PhD in legal anthropology at the University of Vienna (2009) for a thesis on the constitution-making process and the demands of indigenous and peasant organizations in Bolivia. Her main research interests are the Andes, indigenous peoples, law and society, participation and resource governance.

David Vollrath studied political science, economic history and the history of eastern Europe at the Friedrich-Schiller University of Jena and wrote his master’s thesis on ‘Processes of regionalization in Latin America’, graduating with an MA in political science. From 2009 to 2010, he worked as a researcher for the Peruvian environmental organization GRUFIDES (El Grupo de Formación e Intervención para el Desarrollo Sostenible) in Cajamarca, an NGO supporting local communities in addressing social and environmental rights violations by mining companies. He is currently working for the environmental organization Rainforest Rescue in Hamburg.

Jewellord T. Nem Singh is a PhD candidate in the Department of Politics, University of Sheffield. His research examines the politics of natural resources in Latin America. His other research interests include historical institutionalism, critical international political economy, democratization and development politics. His most recent publications focus on the politics of institutional change in Brazil and Chile in Third World Quarterly, the Journal of Developing Societies and the Journal of Critical Globalisation Studies.

Sarah Hunt recently completed her doctoral studies at the University of Limerick on the politics of the Poverty Reduction Strategy processes in Latin America, funded by the Irish Research Council for ­Humanities and the Social Sciences. Prior to this she spent a number of years working with the Irish NGO Trócaire in Central America, 205

Contributors

in Amsterdam. Among her publications are various co-edited books, including Latin America Facing China: South–South Relations beyond the Washington Consensus (Berghahn Books, 2010), Big Business and Economic Development – Conglomerates and Economic Groups in Developing Countries and Transition Economies (Routledge, 2008), Good Governance in the Era of Global Neoliberalism: Conflict and Depolitisation in Latin America, Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa (Routledge, 2004) and Miraculous Metamorphoses: The Neoliberalization of Latin American Populism (Zed Books, 2001).

coordinating the civil society advocacy programmes for Honduras and Nicaragua. She also spent time researching the role of the IMF in the Argentinian crisis at the University of Buenos Aires in 2003, and a year in Tanzania working as an economist with the Ministry of Finance as part of the ODI fellowship scheme.

José Briceño Ruiz has a PhD in political science from the Institut d’Etudes Politiques d’Aix-en-Provence. He is a senior professor at the Universidad de los Andes, Venezuela. He has been an associated r­esearcher in the Centre of Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CREALC), Institut d’Etudes Politiques d’Aix-en-Provence, and the Centre of Latin American Studies Romulo Gallegos in Caracas. He is director of the academic journal Cuadernos sobre Relaciones Internacionales Regionalismo y Desarrollo. He is a specialist on regional integration and international political economy and has written and edited books on regional integration.

206

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In­­dex

abortion, 71; criminalization of, 59 Acosta, Alberto, 70 Advisory Councils (Chile), 97 Alemán, Arnaldo, 165 Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra América (ALBA), 14, 19, 54, 56, 58; Joint Declaration, principles of, 25–6; People’s Trade Agreement (ALBA–TCP), 14, 24, 27–31, 193–4 (principles of, 27) Alianza coalition (Chile), 151 Alianza Estratégica (Chile), 147, 153, 154 Alianza País (AP) (Ecuador), 69, 70 Allende, Salvador, 143 Amazon region: hydrocarbon activity in, 129; mining in, 128 ARENA party (El Salvador), 51, 52–4 Argentina, 10, 14, 176, 179, 183, 194, 196, 199; exports to China, 117; historic forms of capital accumulation in, 35–40; state– civil society relations in, 34–47 Argentinazo, El, 38–40, 43 Asamblea Coordinadora de Estudiantes Secundarios (ACES) (Chile), 100 Asamblea del Pueblo Guaraní (APG) (Bolivia), 134–5 asambleas barriales (Argentina), 35, 39, 40, 41, 46 authoritarian enclaves, 95–8 authoritarianism, institutionalization of, 144 Avritzer, Leonardo, 79, 80 Ayllu people (Bolivia), 131, 133 Aylwin, Patricio, 94, 96, 98, 145, 148 Aymara people, 135 Bachelet, Michelle, 15, 95, 97, 98, 99, 104, 149, 153, 195

Bagua, Amazonas (Peru), extractive protests in, 136, 138 Bear Creek company, 135 Bielsa, Rafael, 179 binding laws, in Chile, 96, 100 Bloque Social por la Educación (Chile), 100, 103, 106 Bohn, Alejandro, 141 Bolaños, Enrique, 167, 170 Bolívar, Simón, 23, 29 Bolivia, 10, 15, 28, 30, 198, 199; civil society participation in, 161–72; Constitution of, 196; Electoral Law, 131; extractive consultation in, 133–5; extractivism in context of globalization, 128–30; gas sector in, 118, 128; Law for National Dialogue, 169; lithium resources of, 128, 129; mineral resources of, 114–16, 200–1 (governance of, 126–40); New Economic Policy, 164; Protest Cycle, 129; reform of gas management policies, 120–1; trade unions in, 164 Bolivia Digna programme Bolsa Familia programme (Brazil), 119 Bono Juana Azurduy programme (Bolivia), 129 Bono Juancita Pinto programme (Ecuador), 119, 129 Brazil, 10, 14–15, 180, 183; exports to China, 117; participatory governance in, 78–93; reform of extractive industries in, 119 Bucaram, Abdalá, 70, 74 Bulnes, Felipe, 105 bureaucracy, expansion of, 66

233

Cacerés, Alex Segovia, 52 Caja Rural Nacional (Nicaragua), 30 Caldera, Rafael, 114 Caracazo (Venezuela), 114 Carta of Montevideo, 178 Catholic Church, 165 Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), 53, 169 Central Union Confederation (CUT) (Brazil), 115 Chaputepec Peace Accords, 50 Charagua Norte extractive consultation case, Bolivia, 133–5, 138 Chávez, Hugo, 3, 11, 14, 55, 57, 118, 119, 120, 189, 193; oil policy of, 10 chavismo, 3, 120 Chicago Boys, 98 Chile, 10, 15, 195, 196, 197, 199; admitted to OECD, 99; Chile Barrio Programme, 94; Chilean model, 95, 99; exports to China, 117; gas supplies cut, 45; increase in copper revenues, 116–17; insertion in global economy, 98–9; mineral exports of, 112; mining in, 15, 201 (and new left, 141–57); ‘Penguin Revolution’, 99–101, 195 (tactics of, 106); state– civil society relations, 94–108; students’ protests in, 15, 99–101 Chilean Council of University Rectors (CRUCH), 105 Chilean Students’ Confederation (CONFECH), 100, 105 China: effect on commodity prices, 117; growth of, 9; investment in Brazil and Argentina, 117; rising power of, 9, 116–17 Cidade organization (Brazil), 88 citizen power, 28 Citizen Power Councils (CPCs) (Nicaragua), 57 citizens’ revolution, 70–2; use of term, 73, 74 citizenship, definition of, 36 Civil Coordinator (CCER) organization, 165

civil society, 28, 55–7, 107, 189; activism of, 11, 13; composition of, 191; concept of, 162; cooptation of, 123; definition of, 6–8; in Chile, 15; in Ecuador, 63–77; in relation to extractivism, 111–25; not fixed entity, 112; not homogeneous, 202; participation of, 161–72; political and collective character of, 20; resistance to mining policies, 112–16; role of, 202; use of term, 19 see also state–civil society relations Civil Society Consultative Council (CCSC) (Mercosur), 180 civil society organizations (CSOs), 90; control of, 123 Cochabamba, Summit of the Peoples of the South, 184 Colegio de Profesores (Chile), 100 Colom, Álvaro, 48 Colombia, mining protests in, 126 COMIBOL company (Bolivia), 129, 133 Comisión Sectorial del Mercosur (COMISEC), 181 commodity boom, 116, 122, 199 Communist Party of Ecuador, 64 Companhia Vale do Rio Doce, 113, 115, 118, 119 Concentración de Fuerzas Populares (CFP) (Ecuador), 72 Concertación (Chile), 15, 94–7, 98–9, 142, 145, 156, 157; management of natural resources, 146–50 conditionalities, 192 Confederación de Trabajadores Argentina (CTA), 43 Confederación General de Trabajo (CGT) (Argentina), 35 Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), 64, 67–8, 69, 71, 74 Consejo Asesor Presidencial (CAP) (Chile), 99, 100–6 Consejo Minero (Chile), 149, 201 Consejo Nacional de Ayllus y Markas del Qullasuyu (CONAMAQ), 131, 133 234

De la Rúa, Fernando, 38 debt, 39, 161, 165; crisis, 113; default on, 45; reduction, 15 decentralization, 37 de-democratization, 5

deliberative consensual arrangements, 79 demobilization, 95–8 democracy, 56, 139, 142, 157, 185; deepening of, 3; delegative, 37; devaluation of, 192; direct, 19, 21, 31, 78, 84, 126 (mechanisms of, 24); formal, 71; in Argentina, 38; in El Salvador, 52; low-intensity, 50; participatory, 3, 19, 24, 25, 29– 30, 31–2, 70, 76, 191 (empowered, 92); protagonistic revolutionary, 19–27; representative, 23; revolutionary, 14 (in Venezuela, 19–33; regionalization of, 27) Democratic Popular Movement (Ecuador), 64 democratization, 3–16, 36, 48–59, 75, 80, 82, 83, 93, 112, 146, 147, 155, 164, 173, 190, 193, 194; concept of, 5; deepening of, 189–202; in Argentina, 35; in Central America, 59–61; in Chile, 95–9; of production, 32; potential of consultation process, 139; radical, 13 dependency on primary commodities, 122–3, 128, 142, 145, 156, 199–201 deregulation, 37 designated senators, in Chile, 96 dictatorships, 49, 96; in Chile, 142 (imposition of education system, 100, 104) distribution of income, 99 Document of Brasilia, 176 dollarization, 66 drugs trade, 50–1 dual power, 83 Dutra, Olivio, 83 ecologists, verbal attacks on, 73, 121, 122 Ecuador, 10, 14, 28, 30, 196–7, 199; Constitution of, 196; coup d’état, 32; Mining Law (2009), 126; reform of mineral resource policies in, 118, 119; resistance

235

Index

consejos comunales (Venezuela), 3, 25, 70 conselheiros, system of, 85, 89–92 Conselho Brasileiro do Mercosul Social e Participativo, 180–1 constitutional reform, 122 consultation over extractive issues, 127; contestation of, 130–2; empowerment aspect of, 138; in practice, 133–6; self-organized, 135 Continental Social Alliance (HAS), 184 Coordinating Committee of Southern Cone Trade Union Confederations (CCSCS), 174 copper, politics of, in Chile, 141–3 Corocoro mine (Bolivia), 133 Corporación Nacional del Cobre (CODELCO) (Chile), 143, 150, 156; modernization of, 153; reform of, 147–8 corporatism, 67, 68–9; segmented, 196 Correa, Rafael, 14, 63–77, 118, 119, 120, 121, 194–5, 197; closure of Congress, 73; Ecuador: From Banana Republic to No Republic, 74; ‘kidnapping’ of, 63–4; populism of, 72–5; verbal attacks on ecologists, 122 corruption, 53, 115; reduction of, 86 Council of Social Movements (Venezuela), 28, 29, 31 coups: in Ecuador, 64, 72; in Honduras, 54–7, 168 credit schemes for women, 31 criminality, 6, 50, 51 Cristiani, Alfredo, 53 cross-border capital movements, liberalization of, 37 cross-class coalitions, 86–7 Cuba, 25, 27; mineral exports of, 112

against oil companies in, 116; restoration of state in, 194–5 education, 31; bilingual, 68, 69; privatization of, in Chile, 151; social segregation in, 101 El Salvador, 14, 48–62 Encuentro por un Mercosur Productivo y Solidario, 182–3 environmental and social impact assessments (EIAs), 132, 133, 134 environmental issues, 138; not dealt with by progressive governments, 121; of extractive companies, 116 Esquipulas II agreement (Central America), 50 exclusion from public life, 84 extractive industries, 9–10, 13, 15; in Bolivia, 126–40; in Peru, 126–40; resistance to, 123–4 extractivism, 111–25, 200; new, 118–22 Ezzati, Ricardo, 99 factory occupations, 38–9, 46 Facussé, Carlos Flores, 55 Farabundo Martí Front for National Liberation (FMLN), 48, 50, 52–4 Federación de Estudiantes Secundarios (FESES) (Chile), 100 Federación de los Trabajadores del Cobre (FTC), 147 Federation of Ecuadorian Indians (FEI), 71, 74 Fogaça, José, 87 Fome Zero (Brazil), 119 FOSDEH organization (Honduras), 165, 167 Foxley, Alejandro, 98 Fraser, Nancy, 6, 189, 192 free trade agreements (FTAs), 136 Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), 175, 184 Frei, Eduardo, 101, 94, 143, 149 Frente Ampio (Uruguay), 181 Frente para la Victoria (Argentina), 36, 46 Fujimori, Alberto, 130 Funes, Mauricio, 52–4

García, Alan, 127, 129, 132, 136, 137, 138, 200 García Huidobro, Juan Eduardo, 102 gay rights, 71 gender issues, in Chilean mining, 149–50 Genro, Tarso, 83 Glamis Gold company, 115 globalization, 3–16, 51, 53, 137, 173, 190; and Kirchnerism, 45–6; use of term, 8 Golborne, Laurence, 153 Golinger, Eva, 65 governance, good, 79, 86 Gramsci, Antonio, 81 Grand National Unity Alliance (GANA) (El Salvador), 53 Guaraní people, 134 Guatemala: mineral resources of, 114–16; resistance to gold and silver mining in, 116 Guhalde, Eduardo, 176 Gutiérrez, Lucio, 64, 70 Gutiérrez, Manuel, 105 Habermas, J., 80, 83–4 healthcare, 31 heavily indebted poor countries initiative, second (HIPC II), 15, 16, 161; timetable sequence of, 166 homicide rates, in Central America, 50 Honduras, 14, 15, 48–62; civil society particpation in, 161–72; coup d’état in, 32 Humala, Ollanta, 15, 126, 128, 129–30, 132, 139, 200 human rights: of indigenous peoples, 130, 136; related to extractive industry consultation, 132; violations against mining protestors, 135 Hurricane Mitch, 166 Hurtado, Osvaldo, 67 illiteracy see literacy import substitution industrialization (ISI), 35, 36, 68, 113

236

Jaramillo, Diana, 66 Jubilee organization (Bolivia), 165, 166, 169 justice: deliberative, 80; distributive, 98; social, 142, 174 Kemeny, Marcelo, 141 Kichwa language, use of, 68, 71 Kirchner, Néstor, 14, 34–47 passim, 176–7, 179, 194 Kirchnerism, 40 labour code (Chile), 151 labour rights, 15, 141–3; in Chile, 148 Lagos, Ricardo, 95, 97, 98, 101, 148, 149, 153 Lander, Edgardo, 3–4 Lavin, Joaquin, 105 Leco people, 134 Lenin, V. I., 83

Ley Aseguramiento de la Calidad de la Educación (Chile), 104 Ley General de Educación (Chile), 104 Ley Orgánica Constitucional de Enseñanza (LOCE) (Chile), 100–1, 104 liberalization: in Chile, 98, 144; in Latin American mining sector, 115 literacy, 30, 68 lithium, demand for, 128 Lliquimuni, hydrocarbon consultation case, Bolivia, 133–5 Lobo, Porfirio ‘Pepe’, 54–5 Local Solidarity Governance (GSL) (Brazil), 88 Lugo, Fernando, 182 Macas, Luis, 75 Macpherson, C. B., 25, 27 Maduro, Ricardo, 167, 170 Mahuad, Jamil, 70, 74 Manhattan Minerals Mining company, 135 marginalized persons, survey of, 127 Martínez Guzmán, Raúl, 141 Marxism, 6, 19–20 Maturana, Esteban, 151 medals, symbolic importance of, 65–6 Menem, Carlos, 36, 185 Menemismo (Argentina), 36–7, 43, 47 Mercosur see Southern Common Market (Mercosur) Micheletti, Roberto, 54 microcredit, 58 mineral resources of Latin America, 114; politicization of, 124 miners, trapped, in Chile see San José mine mining industry, 15; restructuring of, 113 mining projects, resistance to, 121 Misión Milagro (Cuba-Venezuela), 30 misiones (Venezuela), 26, 119, 123 Mochilazo, El (Chile), 99–100 modernization, 112, 164; resistance to, 69 money laundering, 50–1, 58

237

Index

income, distribution of, 27 India, economic activity in Latin America, 118 indigenous languages, use of, 68 indigenous peoples, 68, 107, 122, 124, 134, 136, 137, 138, 200; involvement in resource governance, 126; movements of, 74, 75 (in Ecuador, 67–8); rights of, 130 industrialization, 173 inequalities, structural, central to democratization, 60 inflation, 39; control of, 43; in Argentina, 36–7 Inter-American Commission of Human Rights, 133 Inter-American Development Bank, 131 International Council on Mining and Metals (ICMM), 127 International Labour Organization (ILO), Convention on the Rights of Indigenous and Tribal Peoples, 130 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 39, 144, 166, 168, 192, 198; Argentine repayment of debt, 45

Montesquieu, Charles-Louis de Secondat, 23 Morales, Evo, 118, 121, 127, 129, 137, 139, 172 Mosetén people, 134 Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) (Bolivia), 131, 138 multinational corporations, 45, 115, 117, 129 Muriel Mining company, 126 Murillo, Rosario, 57, 58

Constitution of, 28–9; relations with Russia, 58; relations with Venezuela, 31 non-governmental organizations (NGOs): in Nicaragua, 58; role of, 162 Nuñez, Gerardo, 141

Narvaez, Zoilámerica, 59 National Agreement for Education (Chile), 105 National Association of Private Enter­prise (ANEP) (El Salvador), 52 National Economic and Social Planning Council (CONPES) (Nicaragua), 168–70 National Endowment for Democracy (NED), 58 National Secretariat of Planning and Development (SENPLADES) (Ecuador), 68 nationalization, 126; of mineral resources, 124; of mining companies, 113, 143; of oil, 112 see also renationalization neocorporatism, segmented, 42, 43, 44, 46 neodesarrollismo, 47 neoliberalism, 9, 11, 46, 113–14, 118, 124, 129, 130, 143, 161, 164; collapse of legitimacy of, 35; consequences of, 154; in Chile, 94–5, 107; in mining policies, 112–16; pragmatic, 144; rejection of, 141, 191; rollback of, 129 see also postneoliberalism New International Economic Order (NIEO), 27 new left, 4, 171, 191; emergence of, 11–13; in Chile, 141–57; relation to Mercosur, 173–86 Nicaragua, 14, 15, 28, 30, 48–62; civil society participation in, 161–72;

Observatory of Latin American Mining Conflicts (OCMAL), 116 oil: exports of Ecuador, 76; national­ ization of, 112; reserves of Latin America, 112; rising prices of, 116 oil and gas industry, 10, 15; restructuring of, 113 ophthalmological treatment programmes, 30 Organic Law of Popular Power (Venezuela), 23 Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), 10 Ortega, Daniel, 48, 50, 57, 58, 59, 165, 171, 172 Osasco, Brazil see participatory budgeting, in Osasco Oxfam, 58 Pachakutik party (Ecuador), 64 Palma, Lariza, 148 Paraguay, 182 participation, 97, 122; depoliticization of, 169; in Poverty Reduction Strategy, 166, 166; institutionalization of, 163; of civil society, in Central America, 161–72; theory of, 190 see also democracy, participatory participatory budgeting (PB), 14–15, 78, 197–8; in Osasco, 14, 79, 82–8, 88–92, 197; in Porto Alegre, 14, 78, 81, 82–8, 189, 197; redistributive effects of, 84 Participatory Budgeting Council (PBC), 84–5, 89 participatory governance, in Brazil, 78–93 participatory mechanisms, limits on, 197–8

238

Plenario Intersindical de Trabajadores – Convención Nacional de Trabajadores (PITCNT) (Uruguay), 181 police, in Ecuador: political activism of, 63–5, 69; restructuring of, 64–5 political opportunity structure, 185 popular power, 21–3 post-neoliberalism, 148, 189, 190, 199 poverty: new poor, 39; reduction of, 67, 69, 119, 121, 122, 190, 194, 199 (in Argentina, 40; in Central America, 161–72; in Venezuela, 26, 27; national programmes for, 200); role of poor in participatory budgeting, 86 Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRS), 15, 161–4, 198; civil society participation in, 166–71 power, forms of, in Venezuela, 21–3 power-geometries, 20 privatization, 10, 37, 51, 113, 114, 129, 144, 145; of education, in Chile, 151; of mineral resource companies, 124 professional citizen, figure of, 85 property, forms of, in Venezuelan law, 21 Protocol of Ouro Preto, 174 Public Service Organic Law (Ecuador), 65–6 public sphere, 79, 80, 83–4, 198; plebeian, 84 Que se vayan todos, 39 quorums required to reform laws, in Chile, 96 recall referendum, 24 regional integration, 16 regionalism, social, 174 regionalization, of revolutionary democracy, 27 renationalization, 115; of mineral extraction companies, 200 Renovación Nacional (RN) (Chile), 97 Renta Dignidad programme (Bolivia), 119, 129

239

Index

Partido Democrático Trabalhista (PDT) (Brazil), 83 Partido do Movimento Democrático Brasileiro (PMDB), 81 Partido Justicialista (PJ) (Argentina), 36 Patiño, Ricardo, 64 Patriotic Society (Ecuador), 64 peasantry, participation in resource governance, 126–40 Penguin Revolution see Chile, ‘Penguin Revolution’ Pérez, Carlos Andrés, 114 Pérez, Victor, 105 Peronism, 35–6, 41, 42, 47 Peru, 15; Consultation Law (2011), 132, 139; exports to China, 117; extractive consultation in, 131–2, 135–6; extractivism in context of globalization, 128–30; hydrocarbon boom in, 128–9; La Gran Transformación, 130; mineral exports of, 112; mineral extraction in, 200–1; mining protests in, 126; resistance to gold mining in, 116; resource governance in, 126–40 Petroamérica energy strategy, 29 Petroandina, 29 Petrobras, 113, 118, 119 Petrocaribe, 29, 58 Petróleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA), 114, 118, 120, 123 Petroperu, 130 Petrosur, 29 Piñera, Jose, 145 Piñera, Sebastian, 94, 105, 106, 151, 153, 154, 195, 201 pink tide in Latin America, 34, 54, 61, 128, 137, 191–3, 202 Pinochet, Augusto, 101, 143–5, 155 piqueteros (Argentina), 35, 38, 40, 39, 46, 194 Plan Bunge y Borne (Argentina), 37 Plan Familias (Argentina), 42 Plan Jefes y Jefas de Hogar, 42 Plan Laboral (Chile), 145 Planes Trabajar (Argentina), 42 Plano Diretor, 86

Repsol YPF company, 136 Republicanism, 7 resources, of Venezuela, 29, 30 retaxation of mineral extraction, 200 rights see human rights and labour rights Rio Blanco mining project (Peru), 135 Rodriguez, Oscar Andrés, 55 Roldós, Jaime, 67 royalties and taxation of companies, 149, 150, 200 (of oil companies, 118) Salinas, Roberto, 150 Salvadorean Foundation for Economic and Social Development, 52 San Isidro hydrocarbon field (Bolivia), 134 San José mine, freeing of trapped miners, 107, 141 Sánchez de Losada, Gonzalo, 114–15, 126, 167 Sandinista Movement (FSLN), 28–9, 48, 57, 58, 59 Santa Ana mine (Peru), 135 Santos, Juan Manuel, 57 self-government, 25 Sigal, Eduardo, 179 Silva, Luis Inacio Lula da, 176–7, 180, 183, 185; election of, 11 social movements, 124, 191; backlash against, 123; cooptation of, 70–2; in Bolivia, 129; in Brazil, 80, 81, 83; in Ecuador, 63–77; in Honduras, 60; support for left governments, 120 social street parliamentarism, 24 socialism, 23; twenty-first-century, 19–27, 120 Sociedad Nacional de Minería (SONAMI) (Chile), 149 socio-environmental conflicts, 116 Somos Mercosur programme (Uruguay), 181–2 Somoza family (Nicaragua), 49 South–South relations, 117

Southern Common Market (Mercosur), 16; Mercosur Education System (SEM), 175; social dimension of, 173–86, 195–6; Social Summits, 182–3, 196 Souza, Emídio de, 89 sovereignty, popular, 28 Special Representation for Regional Integration and Social Participation (REIPS) (Argentina), 179 state, 21; as guarantor of labour rights, 141–2; co-responsible with the people, 26; in mainstream political science, 6; reclaiming of, 189; relations with labour, in Chile, 150–6; restoration of, in Ecuador, 194–5; return of, 111–25; role of, 44, 76, 129, 137 (reduced, 37); state-in-revolution, 20, 26, 28; state/society complex, 20; transformation of, 5, 8 state–civil society relations, 3–16, 173, 189–202; in Argentina, 34–47; in Brazil, 80–2; in Chile, 94–108; in El Salvador, 48–62; in Honduras, 48–62; in Nicaragua, 48–62; in Venezuela, 13–14; new forms of, 193–6 street children, rehabilitation programmes for, 31 strikes: in Argentina, 42–3; in Chile, 148, 153 (at Minera Escondida, 153) strong publics, 6–7, 13, 46–7, 92, 137, 189, 191–3, 202; versus strong states, 193–201 structural adjustment, 161 student mobilizations, in Chile, 94–108, 151–2, 156, 195; lessons from, 104–6 subcontracted labour, 67 subsidization of gas for the poor, 67 Summits of the Peoples of the South, 177, 184, 196 Tarrow, Sidney, 185 technocrats, class of, 113

240

Venezuela, 3–4, 10, 19–33, 119, 193–4; changing state–civil society relations, 13–14; coup d’état in, 32; exports to China, 117; mineral exports of, 112; mineral resources of, 114–16; mobilizations against Chávez, 120; restructuring of resource extraction in, 118

UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, 130–1 uncivil society, 6 Unidad Popular (Chile), 11 Union Democrática Independiente (UDI) (Chile), 97 Union of Popular Organizations of Ecuador, 71, 74 United States of America (USA), 53–4, 56, 58, 64–5, 98, 192; interests in Latin America, 49–50; support for coups d’état, 32 universities, private, in Chile, 105 Uruguay, 10, 181 USAID, 58 usefulness of studying Central America, 61 Vale company see Companhia Vale do Rio Doce Varsky, Hugo, 179–80, 182 Vázquez, Mariana, 183 Vázquez, Tabaré, 181 Velasco, Andrés, 98

wages, minimum wage, 67 Washington Consensus, 113, 119–20, 122, 164, 178 water, used by mining companies, 150 women, working conditions of, 150 Workers’ Party (PT) (Brazil), 79–92 passim, 197; electoral success in Porto Alegre, 87 World Bank, 15, 115, 131, 144, 166, 168, 192, 198 World Development Report, marginalized persons survey, 127 World Social Forum, Porto Alegre meeting, 79 Yacimientos Petroliferos Fiscales Bolivianos (YPFB), 114, 118 Yo Sí Puedo programme (Cuba), 30 YPFB PETROANDINA consortium, 134 Zelaya Rosales, Manuel ‘Mel’, 48, 168, 170, 171, 172; coup against, 54–7 Zero Hunger programme (Nicaragua), 57 Zero Profit organization (Nicaragua), 58

241

Index

Televicentro (Honduras), 55 trade unions, 35, 36, 41, 42, 55, 82, 86, 95, 162; in Argentina, 196; in Bolivia, 164; in Chile, 141–57, 196 (in mining, 201) transition, concept of, 5, 80 transition theory (transitology), 4–5, 96 Treaty of Asunción, 173–4 trueque (barter clubs) (Argentina), 38, 40, 41